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GREATER BRITAIN: 



A RECORD OF TRA VEL 



IN 



ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES 



DURING 



1866 AND 1867. 



BY 



Sir CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, Bart., M.P. 

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WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. 



THIRD EDITJJ^^ 



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r,-^U3i^AaM^^ 



"^ ESTABLi:iiLD 1^75. 



MACMILLAN A 

1869. 



L?Oj5)GET0N'r^\ 



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MY FATHER'S MEMORY 



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THIS BOOK. 



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2L3m^m^'^'^ 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 






WASHINGTON 



PREFACE. 



-♦o^ 



In 1866 and 1867, I followed England round the world: 
everywhere I was in English-speaking, or in English-governed 
lands. If I remarked that climate, soil, manners of life, that 
mixture with other peoples had modified the blood, I saw, too, 
that in essentials the race was always one. 

The idea which in all the length of my travels has been at 
once my fellow and my guide — a key wherewith to unlock the 
hidden things of strange new lands — is a conception, however 
imperfect, of the grandeur of our race, already girdling the 
earth, which it is destined, perhaps, eventually to overspread. 

In America, the peoples of the world are being fused together, 
but they are run into an English mould : Alfred's laws and 
Chaucer's tongue are theirs whether they would or no. There 
are men who say that Britain in her age will claim the glory of 
having planted greater Englands across the seas. They fail to 



viii PREFACE. 

perceive that she has done more than found plantations of her 
own — that she has imposed her institutions upon the offshoots 
of Germany, of Ireland, of Scandinavia, and of Spain. Through 
America, England is speaking to the world. 

Sketches of Saxondom may be of interest even upon humbler 
grounds : the development of the England of Elizabeth is to be 
found, not in the Britain of Victoria, but in half the habitable 
globe. If two small islands are by courtesy styled " Great," 
America, Australia, India, must form a " Greater Britain." 

C. W. D. 



76, Sloane Street, S.W. 
June, 1869. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 



CHAP. 

I. — VIRGINIA 



PAGE 

3 

II. — THE NEGRO I4 

III. — THE SOUTH 23 

IV. — THE EMPIRE STATE 28 

V. CAMBRIDGE COM- 
MENCEMENT 36 

VI. — CANADA 46 

VII. — UNIVERSITY OF MI- 
CHIGAN 57 

VIII. — THE PACIFIC RAIL- 
ROAD 64 

IX. — OMPHALISM 70 

X. — LETTER FROM DEN- 
VER 74 

XI. — RED INDIA 83 

XII. — COLORADO 89 

XIII. — ROCKY MOUNTAINS . 93 



CHAP. 

XIV.- 

XV.- 

XVI.- 

XVII.- 

XVIII.- 

XIX.- 

XX.- 

XXI.- 

XXII.- 

XXIII.- 

XXIV.- 

XXV.- 

XXVI.- 

XXVII.- 
XXVIII.- 



-BRIGHAM YOUNG .. 

-MORMONDOM 

-WESTERN EDITORS.. 

-UTAH 

-NAMELESS ALPS 

-VIRGINIA CITY 

-EL DORADO 

-LYNCH LAW 

-GOLDEN CITY 

-LITTLE CHINA 

-CALIFORNIA 

-MEXICO 

-REPUBLICAN OR DE 

MOCRAT 

-BROTHERS 

-AMERICA 



PAGE 

99 
104 
107 
118 
125 
138 
150 
163 
176 
186 

193 
200 

205 
214 
222 



PART II. 



I. — PITCAIRN ISLAND ... 233 

II. — HOKITIKA 239 

III. — POLYNESIANS 251 

IV. — PAREWANUI PAH ... 256 



V. — THE MAORIES 273 

VI. — THE TWO FLIES 280 

VII. — THE PACIFIC 285 



CONTENTS. 



PART III- 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. — SYDNEY 291 

II. — RIVAL COLONIES ... 297 

IIL — VICTORIA 303 

IV. — SQUATTER ARISTO- 
CRACY 317 

V. — COLONIAL DEMO- 
CRACY 322 

VI. — PROTECTION 33 1 

VII. — LABOUR 339 



CHAP. PAGE 

VIII.— WOMAN 347 

IX. — VICTORIAN PORTS... 350 

X. — TASMANIA 353 

XI. — CONFEDERATION 364 

XII. — ADELAIDE 367 

XIII. — TRANSPORTATION ... 376 

XIV. — AUSTRALIA 387 

XV. — COLONIES 393 



PART IV. 



I. — MARITIME CEYLON . 403 
IL — KANDY 413 

IIL — MADRAS TO CAL- 
CUTTA 419 

IV. — BENARES 427 

V. — CASTE 433 

VI. — MOHAMEDAN CITIES 444 

VII. — SIMLA 452 

VIIL — COLONIZATION 464 

IX. — THE "gazette" ... 470 

X. — UMRITSUR 478 

XL — LAHORE 487 



XII.- 

XIIL- 

XIV.- 

XV.- 

XVI.- 

XVII.- 

XVIIL- 

XIX.- 

XX.- 

XXI.- 

XXII.- 

XXIIL- 



-OUR INDIAN ARMY. 491 

-RUSSIA 496 

-NATIVE STATES 506 

-SCINDE 516 

-OVERLAND ROUTES . 523 

-BOMBAY 531 

-THE MOHURRUM ... 537 
-ENGLISH LEARNING 543 

-INDIA 550 

-DEPENDENCIES 561 

-FRANCE IN THE EAST 566 
-THE ENGLISH 572 



APPENDIX. 

A MAORI DINNER 574 



INDEX. 



575 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

KX 

PAGE 
PORTER ROCKWELL 127 

FRIDAY'S STATION — VALLEY OF LAKE TAHOE j 

TEAMING UP THE GRADE AT SLIPPERY FORD, IN THE SIERRA ) 

VIEW ON THE AMERICAN RIVER — THE PLACE WHERE GOLD WAS 

FIRST FOUND I5I 

THE BRIDAL VEIL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY I59 

EL CAPITAN, YOSEMITE VALLEY I95 

THE (3LD AND THE NEW : BUSH SCENERY — COLLINS STREET, EAST 

MELBOURNE 305 

GOVERNOR DAVEY's PROCLAMATION 355 



PART I. 



AMERICA. 



B 



GREATER BRITAIN. 



CHAPTER I. 

Virginia. 

From the bows of the steamer Saratoga, on the 20th June, 
1866, I caught sight of the low works of Fort Monroe, as, 
threading her way between the sandbanks of Capes Charles and 
Henry, the ship pressed on, under sail and steam, to enter 
Chesapeake Bay. 

Our sudden arrival amid shoals of sharks and kingfish, the 
keeping watch for flocks of canvas-back ducks, gave us enough 
and to spare of idle work till we fully sighted the Yorktown 
peninsula, overgrown with ancient memories — ancient for 
America. Three towns of lost grandeur, or their ruins, stand 
there still. Williamsburg, the former capital, graced even to 
our time by the palaces where once the royal governors held 
more than regal state ; Yorktown, where Cornwallis surren- 
dered to the continental troops ; Jamestown, the earliest 
settlement, founded in 1607, thirteen years before old Governor 
Winthrop fixed the site of Plymouth, Massachusetts. 

A bump against the pier of Fort Monroe soon roused us 
from our musings, and we found ourselves invaded by a swarm 
of stalwart negro troopers, clothed in the cavalry uniform of 
the United States, who boarded us for the mails. Not a white 
man save those we brought was to be seen upon the pier, and 
the blazing sun made me thankful that I had declined an 
offered letter to Jeff. Davis. 

Pushing off again into the stream, we ran the gauntlet of the 
Rip-Raps passage, and made for Norfolk, having on our left 

B 2 



4 GREATER BRITAIW. [chap. i. 

the many exits of the Dismal Swamp Canal. Crossing Hampton 
Roads — a grand bay with pleasant grassy shores, destined one 
day to become the best known, as by nature it is the noblest, 
of Atlantic ports — we nearly ran upon the wrecks of the Federal 
frigates Cumberland and Congress^ sunk by the rebel ram Merri- 
mac in the first great naval action of the war ; but soon after, 
by a sort of poetic justice, we almost drifted into the black hull 
of the Merri?7iac herself Great gangs of negroes were labour- 
ing laughingly at the removal, by blasting, of the sunken ships. 

When we were securely moored at Norfolk pier, I set off 
upon an inspection of the second city of Virginia. Again not 
a white man was to be seen, but hundreds of negroes were 
working in the heat, building, repairing, road-making, and 
happily chattering the while. At last, turning a corner, I came 
on an hotel, and, as a consequence, on a bar and its crowd of 
swaggering whites — " Johnny Rebs " all, you might see by the 
breadth of their brims, for across the Atlantic a broad-brim 
denotes less the man of peace than the ex-member of a Southern 
guerilla band, Morgan's, Mosby's, or Stuart's. No Southerner 
will wear the Yankee " stove-pipe " hat ; a Panama or Palmetto 
for him, he says, though he keeps to the long black coat that 
rules from Maine to the Rio Grande. 

These Southerners were all alike — all were upright, tall, and 
heavily moustached ; all had long black hair and glittering eyes, 
and I looked instinctively for the baldric and rapier. It needed 
no second glance to assure me that, as far as the men of 
Norfolk were concerned, the saying of our Yankee skipper was 
not far from the truth : " The last idea that enters the mind of 
a Southerner is that of doing work." 

Strangers are scarce in Norfolk, and it was not long before 
I found an excuse for entering into conversation with the 
" citizens." My first question was not received with much 
cordiality by my new acquaintances. " How do the negroes 
work? Wall, we spells nigger with two 'g's,' I reckon." 
(Virginians, I must explain, are used to " reckon" as much as 
are New Englanders to ^' guess," while Western men " calcu- 
late " as often as they cease to swear.) " How does the niggers 
work ? Wall, niggers is darned fools, certain, but they ain't 
quite sich fools as to work while the Yanks will feed 'em. No, 



CHAP, I.] VIRGINIA. 5 

sir, not quite sich fools as that." Hardly deeming it wise to 
point to the negroes working in the sun-blaze within a hundred 
yards, while we sat rocking ourselves in the verandah of the 
inn, I changed my tack, and asked whether things were settling 
down in Norfolk. This query soon led my friends upon the 
line I wanted them to take, and in five minutes we were well 
through politics, and plunging into the very war. "You're 
from England. Now, all that they tell you's darned lies. 
We're. just as secesh as we ever was, only so many's killed that 
we can't fight — that's all, I reckon." " We ain't going to fight 
the North and West again," said an ex-colonel of rebel in- 
fantry ; " next time we fight, 'twill be us and the West against 
the Yanks. We'll keep the old flag then, and be darned to 
them." " If it hadn't been for the politicians, we shouldn't 
have seceded at all, I reckon : we should just have kept the 
old flag and the constitution, and the Yanks would have 
seceded from us. Reckon we'd have let'em go." "Wall, 
boys, s'pose we liquor," closed in the colonel, shooting out his 
old quid, and filling in with another. " We'd have fought for a 
lifetime if the cussed Southerners hadn't deserted like they did." 
I asked who these " Southerners " were to whom such dis- 
respect was being shown. " You didn't think Virginia was a 
Southern State over in Britain, did you ? 'cause Virginia's a 
border State, sir. We didn't go to secede at all ; it was them 
blasted Southerners that brought it on us. First, they wouldn't 
give a command to General Robert E. Lee, then they made us 
do all the fighting for 'em, and then, when the pinch came, 
they left us in the lurch. Why, sir, I saw three Mississippi 
regiments surrender without a blow — yes, sir. That's right 
down good whisky ; jess you sample it." Here the steam- 
whistle of the Saratoga sounded with its deep bray. "Reckon 
you'll have to hurry up to make connexions," said one of my 
new friends, and I hurried off, not without a fear lest some of 
the group should shoot after me, to avenge the afi'ront of my 
quitting them before the mixing of the drinks. They were but 
a pack of " mean whites," " North Carolina crackers," but their 
views were those which I found dominant in all ranks at Rich- 
mond, and up the country in Virginia. 

After all, the Southern planters are not " The South," which 



6 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. i. 

for political purposes is composed of the "mean whites," of 
the Irish of the towns, and of the South-Western men — 
Missourians, Kentuckians, and Texans — fiercely anti-Northern, 
without being in sentiment what we should call Southern : 
certainly not representatives of the "Southern Chivalry." The 
" mean whites," or " poor trash," are the whites who are not 
planters — members of the slave-holding race who never held a 
slave — white men looked down upon by the negroes. It is a 
necessary result of the despotic government of one race by 
another that the poor members of the dominant people are 
universally despised: the "destitute Europeans" of Bombay, 
the "white loafers " of the Punjaub, are familiar cases. Where 
slavery exists, the " poor trash " class must inevitably be both 
large and wretched : primogeniture is necessary to keep the 
plantations sufficiently great to allow for the payment of over- 
seers and the supporting in luxury of the planter family, and 
younger sons and their descendants are not only left destitute, 
but debarred from earning their bread by honest industry, for 
in a slave country labour is degrading. 

The Southern planters were gentlemen, possessed of many 
aristocratic virtues, along with every aristocratic vice ; but to 
each planter there were nine " mean whites," who, though 
grossly ignorant, full of insolence, given to the use of the knife 
and pistol upon the slightest provocation, were, until the 
election of Lincoln to the presidency, as completely the rulers 
of America as they were afterwards the leaders of the re- 
bellion. 

At sunset we started up the James on our way to City Point 
and Richmond, sailing almost between the very masts of the 
famous rebel privateer the Florida, and seeing her as she lay 
under the still, grey waters. She was cut out from a Brazilian, 
port, and when claimed by the imperial government was to 
have been at once surrendered. While the despatches were on 
their way to Norfolk, she was run into at her moorings by a 
Federal gunboat, and filled and sank directly. Friends of the 
confederacy have hinted that the collision was strangely oppor- 
tune ; nevertheless, the fact remains that the commander of the 
gunboat was dismissed the navy for his carelessness. 

The twilight was beyond description lovely. The change 



CHAP. I.] VIRGINIA^ 7 

from the auks and ice-birds of the Atlantic to the blue-birds and 
robins of Virginia was not more sudden than that from winter 
to tropical warmth and sensuous indolence; but the scenery, 
too, of the river is beautiful in its very changelessness. Those 
who can see no beauty but in boldness, might call the James 
as monotonous as the lower Loire. 

After weeks of bitter cold, warm evenings favour meditation. 
The soft air, the antiquity of the forest, the languor of the sun- 
set breeze, all dispose to dream and sleep. That oak has seen 
Powhatan ; the founders of Jamestown may have pointed at 
that grand old sycamore. In this drowsy humour, we sighted 
the far-famed batteries of Newport News, and turning-in to 
berth or hammock, lay all night at City Point, near Petersburg. 

A little before sunrise, we weighed again, and sought a 
passage through the tremendous Confederate " obstructions." 
Rows of iron skeletons, the frameworks of the wheels of sunken 
steamers, showed above the stream, casting gaunt shadows 
westward, and varied only by here and there a battered smoke- 
stack or a spar. The whole of the steamers that had plied 
upon the James and the canals before the war were lying here 
in rows, sunk lengthwise along the stream. Two in the middle 
of each row had been raised to let the Government vessels 
pass, but in the heat-mist and faint light the navigation was 
most difficult. For five-and-twenty miles the rebel forts were 
as thick as the hills and points allowed ; yet in spite of booms 
and bars, of sunken ships, of batteries and torpedoes, the 
Federal Monitors once forced their way to Fort Darling in the 
outer works of Richmond. I remembered these things a few 
weeks later, when General Grant's first words to me at Wash- 
ington were : " Glad to meet you. What have you seen ? 
The Capitol ? Go at once and see the Monitors." He after- 
wards said to me, in words that photograph not only the 
Monitors, but Grant : " You can batter away at those things 
for a month, and do no good." 

At Dutch Gap, we came suddenly upon a curious scene. 
The river flowed towards us down a long straight reach, 
bounded by a lofty hill crowned with tremendous earthworks ; 
but through a deep trench or cleft, hardly fifty yards in length, 
upon our right, we could see the stream running with violence 



8 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. i. 

in a direction parallel with our course. The hills about the 
gully were hollowed out into caves and bomb-proofs, evidently 
meant as shelters from vertical fire, but the rough graves of a 
vast cemetery showed that the protection was sought in vain. 
Forests of crosses of unpainted wood rose upon every acre of 
flat ground. On the peninsula, all but made an island by the 
cleft, was a grove of giant trees, leafless, barkless, dead, and 
blanched by a double change in the level of the stream. There 
is no sight so sad as that of a drowned forest, with a turkey- 
buzzard on each bough. On the bank upon our left was an 
iron scaffold, eight or ten stories high — "Butler's Look-out,'' 
as the cleft was " Butler's Dutch Gap Canal." The canal, un- 
finished in war, is now to be completed at State expense for 
'purposes of trade. 

As we rounded the extremity of the peninsula, an eagle was 
seen to light upon a tree. From every portion of the ship— - 
main deck, hurricane deck, lower deck ports — revolvers ready 
capped and loaded were brought to bear upon the bird, who 
sheered off unharmed amid a storm of bullets. After this 
incident, I was careful in my political discussions with my 
shipmates ; disarmament in the Confederacy had clearly not 
been extended to private weapons. 

The outer and inner lines of fortifications passed, we came 
in view of a many-steepled town with domes and spires re- 
calling Oxford, hanging on a bank above a crimson-coloured 
foaming stream. In ten minutes we were alongside the wharf 
at Richmond, and in half an hour safely housed in the 
" Exchange " Hotel, kept by the Messrs. Carrington, of whom 
the father was a private, the son a colonel, in the rebel 
Volunteers. 

The next day, while the works and obstructions on the 
James were still fresh in my mind, I took train to Petersburg, 
the city the capture of which by Grant was the last blow struck 
by the North at the melting forces of the Confederacy. 

The line showed the war : here and there the track, torn up 
in Northern raids, had barely been repaired ; the bridges were 
burnt and broken ; the rails worn down to an iron thread. 
The joke on "board," as they say here for "in the train," was 
that the engine-drivers down the line are tolerably 'cute men, 



> 



CHAP. I.] VIRGINIA. 9 

who, when the rails are altogether worn away, understand how 
to "go it on the bare wood," and who at all times "know 
where to jump." 

From the window of the car we could see that in the 
country there were left no mules, no horses, no roads, no men. 
The solitude is not all owing to the war : in the whole five- 
and-twenty miles from Richmond to Petersburg there was 
before the war but a single station; in New England your 
passage-card often gives a station in every two miles. A 
careful look at the underwood on either side the line showed 
fhat this forest is not primeval, that all this country had once 
been ploughed. 

Virginia stands first among the States for natural advan- 
tages : in climate she is unequalled ; her soil is fertile ; her 
mineral wealth in coal, copper, gold, and iron, enormous and 
well placed ; her rivers good, and her great harbour one of 
the best in the world. Virginia has been planted more than 
250 years, and is as large as England, yet has a free popula- 
tion of only a million. In every kind of production she is 
miserably inferior to Missouri or Ohio, in most inferior also to 
the infant States of Michigan and Illinois. Only a quarter of 
her soil is under cultivation, to half that of poor starved New 
England, and the mines are deserted which were worked by 
the very Indians who were driven from the land as savages a 
hundred years ago. 

There is no surer test of the condition of a country than the 
state of its highways. In driving on the main roads round 
Richmond, in visiting the scene of McClellan's great defeat on 
the Chickahominy at Mechanicsville and Malvern Hill, I myself 
and an American gentleman who was with me had to get out 
and lay the planks upon the bridges, and then sit upon them, 
to keep them down while the black coachman drove across. 
The best roads in Virginia are but ill-kept " corduroys ;" but, 
bad as are these, " plank roads," over which artillery have 
passed, knocking out every other plank, are worse by far ; yet 
such is the main road from Richmond towards the West. 

There is not only a scarcity of roads, but of railroads. A 
comparison of the railway system of Illinois and Indiana with 
the two lines of Kentucky or the one of Western Virginia or 



10 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. i. 

Louisiana, is a comparison of the South with the North, of 
slavery with freedom. Virginia shows aheady the decay of 
age, but is blasted by slavery rather than by war. 

Passing through Petersburg, the streets of which were gay 
with the feathery-brown blooms of the Venetian shumach, but 
almost deserted by human beings, who have not returned to 
the city since they were driven out by the shot and shell, of which 
their houses show the scars, we were soon in the rebel works. 
There are sixty miles of these works in all, line within line, 
three deep : alternations of sand-pits and sand-heaps, with here 
and there a tree-trunk pierced for riflemen, and everywhere a 
double row of chevaux de frise. The forts nearest this point 
were named by their rebel occupants Fort Hell and Fort 
Damnation. Tremendous works, but it needed no long in- 
terview with Grant to understand their capture. I had not 
been ten minutes in his office at Washington before I saw 
that the secret of his unvarying success lay in his unflinching 
determination : there is pith in the American conceit which 
reads in his initials, " U. S. G.," "unconditional-surrender 
Grant." 

The works defending Richmond, hardly so strong as those 
of Petersburg, were attacked in a novel manner in the third 
year of the war. A strong body of Federal cavalry on a raid, 
unsupported by infantry or guns, came suddenly by night upon 
the outer lines of Richmond. Something had led them to 
believe that the rebels were not in force, and with the strange 
aimless bearing that animated both parties during the rebellion, 
they rode straight in along the winding road, unchallenged, 
and came up to the inner lines. There they were met by a 
volley which emptied a few saddles, and retired without even 
stopping to spike the guns in the outer works. Had they 
known enough of the troops opposed to them to have con- 
tinued to advance, they might have taken Richmond, and held 
it long enough to have captured the rebel president and senate, 
and burned the great iron-works and ships. The whole of the 
rebel army had gone north, and even the home guard was 
camped out on the Chickahominy. The troops who fired the 
volley were a company of the " iron-works battalion," boys 
employed at the foundries, not one of whom had ever fired a 



CHAP. I.] VIRGINIA. II 

rifle before this night. They confessed themselves that " one 
minute more, and they'd have run/' but the volley just stopped 
the enemy in time. 

The spot where we first struck the rebel lines was that 
known as the Crater — the funnel-shaped cavity formed when 
Grant sprang his famous mine. One thousand five hundred 
men are buried in the hollow itself, and the bones of those 
smothered by the falling earth are working through the soil. 
Five thousand negro troops were killed in this attack, and are 
buried round the hollow where they died, fighting as gallantly 
as they fought everywhere throughout the war. It is a singular 
testimony to the continuousness of the fire, that the still re- 
maining subterranean passages show that in countermining the 
rebels came once within three feet of the mine, yet failed to 
hear the working parties. Thousands of old army shoes were 
lying on the earth, and negro boys were digging up bullets for 
old lead. 

Within eighty yards of the Crater are the Federal investing 
lines, on which the trumpet flower of our gardens was growing 
wild in deep rich masses. The negroes told me not to gather 
it, because they believe it scalds the hand. They call it " poison 
plant," or " blister weed." The blue-birds and scarlet tannagers 
were playing about the horn-shaped flowers. 

Just within Grant's earthworks are the ruins of an ancient 
church, built, it is said, with bricks that were brought by the 
first colonists from England. About Norfolk, about Petersburg, 
and in the Shenandoah Valley, you cannot ride twenty miles 
through the Virginian forest without bursting in upon some 
glade containing a quaint old church, or a creeper-covered roofless 
palace of the Culpeppers, the Randolphs, or the Scotts. The 
county names have in them all a history. Taking the letter " B " 
alone we have Barbour, Bath, Bedford, Berkeley, Boone, Bote- 
tourt, Braxton, Brooke, Brunswick, Buchanan, Buckingham. A 
dozen counties in the State are named from kings or princes. 
The slave-owning cavaliers whose names the remainder bear are 
the men most truly guilty of the late attempt made by their descen- 
dants to create an empire founded on disloyalty and oppression; 
but within sight of this old church of theirs at Petersburg, thirty- 
three miles of Federal outworks stand as a monument of how 



12 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. i. 

the attempt was crushed by the children of their New England 
brother-colonists. 

The names of streams and hamlets in Virginia have often a 
quaint English ring. On the Potomac, near Harper's Ferry, I 
once came upon " Sir John's Run." Upon my asking a tall 
gaunt fellow who was fishing, whether this was the spot on which 
the Knight of Windsor " larded the lea.n earth," I got for sole 
answer : " Wall, don't know 'bout that, but it's a mighty fine spot 
for yellow-fin trout." The entry to Virginia is characteristic. 
You sail between capes named from the sons of James I., and 
have fronting you the estuaries of two rivers called after the 
King and the Duke of York. 

The old "F. F. V's," the first families of Virginia, whose found- 
ers gave these monarchic names to the rivers and counties of the 
State, are far off now in Texas and California — those, that is, 
which were not extinct before the war. The tenth Lord Fairfax 
keeps a tiny ranch near San Francisco ; some of the chief 
Denmans are also to be found in California. In all such cases 
of which I heard, the emigration took place before the war ', 
northern conquests could not be made use of as a plea whereby 
to escape the reproaches due to the slave-owning system. 
There is a stroke of justice in the fact that the Virginian 
oligarchy have ruined themselves in ruining their State ; but 
the gaming hells of Farobankopolis, as Richmond once was 
called, have much for which to answer. 

When the "burnt district" comes to be rebuilt, Richmond 
will be the most beautiful of all the Atlantic cities ; while the 
water-power of the rapids of the James, and a situation at 
the junction of canal and river, secure for it a prosperous 
future. 

The superb position of the State House (which formed the 
rebel capitol), on the brow of a long hill, whence it overhangs 
the city and the James, has in it something of satire. The 
Parliament-house of George Washington's own State, the State 
House contains the famed statue set up by the general assembly 
of the Commonwealth of Virginia to the hero's memory. With- 
out the building stands the still more noteworthy bronze statue of 
the first President, erected jointly by all the States in the then 
Union. That such monuments should overlook the battle-fields 



CHAP. I.] VIRGINIA. 13 

of the war provoked by the secession from the Union of Washing- 
ton 's loved Virginia, is a fact full of the grim irony of history. 

Hollywood, the cemetery of Richmond, is a place full of 
touching sad suggestion, and very beautiful, with deep shades 
and rippling streams. During the war there were hospitals in 
Richmond for 20,000 men, and ''always full," they say. The 
Richmond men who were killed in battle were buried where they 
fell, but 8000 who died in hospital are buried here, and over them 
is placed a wooden cross, with the inscription in black paint, 
" Dead, but not forgotten." In another spot lie the Union 
dead, under the shadow of the flag for which they died. 

From Monroe's tomb the evening view is singularly soft and 
calm; the quieter and calmer for the drone in which are mingled 
the trills of the mocking-bird, the hoarse croaking of the bull-frog, 
the hum of the myriad fire-flies, that glow like summer light- 
ning among the trees, the distant roar of the river, of which 
the rich red water can still be seen, beaten by the rocks into a 
rosy foam. 

With the moment's chillness of the sunset breeze, the golden 
glory of the heavens fades into grey, and there comes quickly 
over them the solemn blueness of the Southern night. Thoughts 
are springing up of the many thousand unnamed graves, where 
the rebel soldiers lie unknown, when the Federal drums in 
Richmond begin sharply beating the rappel. 



14 GREATER BRITAIN. fCHAP. ir. 



CHAPTER IL 

The Negro. 

In the back country of Virginia, and on the borders of North 
CaroUna, it becomes clear that our common EngHsh notions of 
the negro and of slavery are nearer the truth than common 
notions often are. The London Christy Minstrels are not 
more given to bursts of laughter of the form " Yah ! Yah ! " than 
are the plantation hands. The negroes upon the Virginian 
farms are not maligned by those v/ho represent them as delight- 
ing in the contrast of crimson and yellow, or emerald and sky- 
blue. I have seen them on a Sunday afternoon, dressed in 
scarlet waistcoats and gold-laced cravats, returning hurriedly 
from "meetinV to dance break-downs, and grin from ear to 
ear for hours at a time. What better should we expect from 
men to whom until just now it was forbidden, under tremendous 
penalties, to teach their letters ? 

Nothing can force the planters to treat negro freedom save 
from the comic side. To them the thing is too new for thought, 
too strange for argument ; the ridiculous lies on the surface, 
and to this they turn as a relief. When I asked a planter how 
the blacks prospered under freedom, his answer was, " Ours 
don't much like it. You see, it necessitates monogamy. If I 
talk about the 'responsibilities of freedom,' Sambo says, 'Dunno 
'bout that; please, mass' George, me want two wife.' " Another 
planter tells me, that the only change that he can see in the 
condition of the negroes since they have been free,is that formerly 
the supervision of the overseer forced them occasionally to be 
clean, whereas now nothing on earth can make them wash. He 
says that, writing lately to his agent, he received an answer to 
which there was the following postscript: "You ain't sent no 



CHAP. II.] THE NEGRO. 15 

sope. You had better sent sope : niggers is certainly needing 
sope." 

It is easy to treat the negro question in this way ; easy, on 
the other hand, to assert that since history fails us as a guide 
to the future of the emancipated blacks, we should see what time 
will bring, and meanwhile set down negroes as a monster class 
of which nothing is yet known, and, like the compilers of the 
Catalan map, say of places of which we have no knowledge, 
" Here be giants, cannibals, and negroes." As long as we 
possess Jamaica, and are masters upon the African west coast, 
the negro question is one of moment to ourselves. It is one, 
too, of mightier import, for it is bound up with the future of 
the English in America. It is by no means a question to be 
passed over as a joke. There are five millions of negroes in 
the United States ; juries throughout ten States of the Union 
are mainly chosen from the black race. The matter is not 
only serious, but full of interest, political, ethnological, historic. 

In the South you must take nothing upon trust ; believe 
nothing you are told. Nowhere in the world do " facts *' appear 
so differently to those who view them through spectacles of 
yellow or of rose. The old planters tell you that all is ruin — 
that they have but half the hands they need, and from each 
hand but a half-day's work : the new men, with Northern 
energy and Northern capital, tell you that they get on very 
well. 

The old Southern planters find it hard to rid themselves of 
their traditions ; they cannot understand free blacks, and slavery 
makes not only the slaves but the masters shiftless. They have 
no cash, and the Metayer system gives rise to the suspicion of 
some fraud, for the negroes are very distrustful of the honesty 
of their former masters. 

The worst of the evils that must inevitably grow out of the 
sudden emancipation of millions of slaves have not shown 
themselves as yet, in consequence of the great amount of work 
that has to be done in the cities of the South, in repairing the 
ruin caused during the war by fire and want of care, and in 
building places of business for the Northern capitalists. The 
negroes of Virginia and North Carolina have flocked down to 
the towns and ports by the thousand, and find in Norfolk, 



^ & 



i6 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. n. 

Richmond, Wilmington, and Fort Monroe employment for the 
moment. Their absence from the plantations makes labour 
dear up country, a.nd this in itself tempts the negroes who 
remain on land to work sturdily for wages. Seven dollars a 
month — at the then rate equal to one pound — with board and 
lodging, were being paid to black field-hands on the corn and 
tobacco farms near Richmond. It is when the city works are 
over that pressure will come upon the South. 

Already the negroes are beginning to ask for land, and they 

complain loudly that none of the confiscated lands have been 

assigned to them. " Ef yer dun gib us de land, reckon de ole 

massas '11 starb de niggahs," was a plain, straightforward sum- 

I mary of the negro view of the negro question, given me by a 

\ white-bearded old " uncle " in Richmond, and backed by every 

! black man within hearing in a chorus of " Dat's true, for shore ;" 

1 1 but I found up the country, that the planters are afraid to let 

• the negroes own or farm for themselves the smallest plot of 

,-,| land, for fear that they should sell ten times as much as they 

' ; grew, stealing their " crop " from the granaries of their em- 

^, ployers. 

}\ At a farm near Petersburg, owned by a Northern capitalist, 

I GOO acres, which before emancipation had been tilled by 

1 1 ICO slaves, now needed, I was told, but forty freedmen for 

their cultivation j but when I reached the place, I found that 

V the former number included old people and women, while the 

i-j forty were all hale men. The men were paid upon the tally 

I system. A card was given them for each day's work, which 

was accepted at the plantation store in payment for goods 

' supplied, and at the end of the month money was paid for the 

remaining tickets. The planters say that the field hands will 

not support their old people ; but this means only that, like 

: I white folk, they try to make as much money as they can, and 

' know that if they plead the wants of their wives and children, 

the whites will keep their aged folk. 

That the negro slaves were lazy, thriftless, unchaste, and 

thieves, is true ; but it is as slaves, and not as negroes, that 

l{ they were all these things ; and, after all, the effects of slavery 

I upon the slave are less terrible than its effects upon the master. 

The moral condition to which the planter class had been 



CHAP. II.] THE NEGRO. 17 

brought by slavery, shows out plainly in the speeches of the 
rebel leaders. Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the 
Confederacy, declared in 1861 that " Slavery is the natural and 
moral condition of the negro. ... I cannot permit myself to 
doubt," he went on, '' the ultimate success of a full recognition 
of this principle throughout the civilized and enlightened 
world .... negro slavery is in its infancy." 

There is reason to beUeve that the American negroes will 
justify the hopes of their friends : they have made the best of 
every chance that has been given them as yet ; they were good 
soldiers, they are eager to learn their letters, they are steady at 
their work : — in Barbadoes they are industrious and well-con- 
ducted ; in La Plata they are exemplary citizens. In America 
the coloured labourer has had no motive to be industrious. 

General Grant assured me of the great aptness at soldiering 
shown by the negro troops. In battle they displayed extraor- 
dinary courage, but if their officers were picked off they could 
not stand a charge ; no more, he said, could their Southern 
masters. The power of standing firm after the loss of leaders 
is possessed only by regiments where every private is as good 
as his captain and colonel, such as the North-western and New 
England volunteers. 

Before I left Richmond, I had one morning found my way 
into a school for the younger blacks. There were as many 
present as the forms would hold — sixty, perhaps, in all — and 
three wounded New England soldiers, with pale thin faces, 
were patiently teaching them to write. The boys seemed 
quick and apt enough, but they were very raw — only a week or 
two in the school. Since the time when Oberlin first pro- 
claimed the potential equality of the race, by admitting negroes 
as freely as white men and women to the college, the negroes 
have never been backward to learn. 

It must not be supposed that the negro is wanting in abilities 
of a certain kind. Even in the imbecility of the Congo dance 
we note his unrivalled mimetic power. The religious side of 
the negro character is full of weird suggestiveness ; but super- 
stition, everywhere the handmaid of ignorance, is rife among 
the black plantation-hands. It is thought that the punishment 
with which the shameful rites of Obi-worship have been visited 

c 



i8 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ii. 

has proved, even in the city of New Orleans, insufficient to 
prevent them. Charges of witchcraft are as common in Vir- 
ginia as in Orissa : in the Carohnas, as in Central India, the 
use of poison is often sought to work out the events foretold 
by some noted sorceress. In no direction can the matter be 
followed out to its conclusions without bringing us face to face 
with the sad fact, that the faults of the plantation negro are 
every one of them traceable to the vices of the slavery system, 
and that the Americans of to-day are suffering beyond measure 
for evils for which our forefathers are responsible. We our- 
selves are not guiltless of wrong-doing in this matter : if it is 
still impossible openly to advocate slavery in England, it has at 
least become a habit persistently to write down freedom. We 
are no longer told that God made the blacks to be slaves, but 
we are bade remember that they cannot prosper under emanci- 
pation. All mention of Barbadoes is suppressed, but we have 
daily homilies on the condition of Jamaica. The negro ques- 
tion in America is briefly this : is there, on the one hand, 
reason to fear that, dollars applied to land decreasing while 
black mouths to be fed increase, the Southern States will 
become an American Jamaica? is there, on the other hand, 
ground for the hope that the negroes may be found not incap- 
able of the citizenship of the United States ? The former of 
these two questions is the more • difficult, and to some extent 
involves the latter : can cotton, can sugar, can rice, can coffee, 
can tobacco, be raised by white field-hands ? If not, can they 
be raised with profit by black free labour ? Can co-operative 
planting, directed by negro overlookers, possibly succeed, or 
must the farm be ruled by white capitalists, agents, and over- 
seers ? 

^ It is asserted that the negro will not work without compul- 
sion ; but the same may be said of the European. There is 
compulsion of many kinds. The emancipated negro may still 
be forced to work — forced as the white man is forced in this 
and other lands, by the alternative, work or starve ! This 
forcing, however, may not be confined to that which the laws 
of natural increase lead us to expect ; it may be stimulated by 
bounties on immigration. 

The negro is not, it would seem, to have a monopoly of 



CHAP. II.] THE NEGBO. 19 

Southern labour in this continent This week we hear of three 
shiploads of Chinese coolies as just landed in Louisiana j and 
the air is thick with rumours of labour from Bombay, from 
Calcutta, from the Pacific islands — of Eastern labour in its 
hundred shapes — not to speak of competition with the whites, 
now commencing with the German immigration into Tennessee. 

The berries of this countiy are so large, so many, so full of 
juice, that alone they form a never-failing source of nourishment 
to an idle population. Three kinds of cranberries, American, 
pied, and English ; two blackberries, huckleberries, high-bush 
and low-bush blueberries — the latter being the English bilberry 
— are among the best known of the native fruits. No one in 
this country, however idle he be, need starve. If he goes 
farther south, he has the banana, the true staff of life. 

The terrible results of the plentiful possession of this tree are 
seen in Ceylon, at Panama, in the coast-lands of Mexico, at 
Auckland in New Zealand. At Pitcairn's Island the plantain 
grove has beaten the missionary from the field ; there is much 
lip-Christianity, but no practice to be got from a people who 
possess the fatal plant. The much abused cocoa-nut cannot 
come near it as a devil's agent. The cocoa-palm is confined to 
a few islands and coast tracts — confined, too, to the tropics and 
sea-level ; the plantain and banana extend over seventy degrees 
of latitude, down to Botany Bay and King George's Sound, and 
up as far north as the Khyber Pass. The palm asks labour — 
not much, it is true ; but still a few days' hard work in the year 
in trenching, and climbing after the nuts. The plantain grows 
as a weed, and hangs down its bunches of ripe tempting fruit 
into your lap, as you lie in its cool shade. The cocoa-nut tree 
has a hundred uses, and urges man to work to make spirit from 
its juice j ropes, clothes, matting, bags, from its fibre ; oil from 
the pulp ; it creates an export trade which appeals to almost all 
men by their weakest side, in offering large and quick returns 
for little work. John Ross's " Isle of Cocoas," to the west of 
Java and south of Ceylon, yields him heavy gains ; there are 
profits to be made upon the Liberian coast, and even in Southern 
India and Ceylon. The plantain will make nothing ; you can 
eat it raw or fried, and that is all ; you can eat it every day of 
your life without becoming tired of its taste ; without suffering 

c 2 



20 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ii. 

in your health, you can live on it exclusively. In the banana 
groves of Florida and Louisiana there lurk much trouble and 
danger to the American free States. 

The negroes have hardly much chance in Virginia against 
the Northern capitalists, provided with white labour; but the 
States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and South Carolina, 
promise to be wholly theirs. Already they are flocking to 
places in which they have a majority of the people, and can 
control the municipalities and defend themselves, if necessary, 
by force ; but even if the Southerners of the coast desert their 
country, the negroes will not have it to themselves, unless 
nature declares that they shall. New Englanders will pour in 
with capital and energy, and cultivate the land by free black or 
by coolie labour, if either will pay. If they do pay, competi- 
tion will force the remaining blacks to work or starve. 

The friends of the negro are not without a fear that the 
labourers will be too many for their work j for, while the older 
cotton States appear to be worn out, the new, such as Texas 
and Tennessee, will be reserved by public opinion to the whites. 
For the present the negroes will be masters in seven of the 
rebel States ; but in Texas, white men — English, Germans, and 
Danes — are growing cotton with success ; and in Georgia and 
North Carolina, which contain mountain districts, the negro 
power is not likely to be permanent. 

We may, perhaps, lay it down as a general principle that, 
when the negro can fight his way through opposition, and stand 
alone as a farmer or labourer, without the aid of private or 
State charity, then he should be protected in the position he 
has shown himself worthy to hold, that of a free citizen of an 
enlightened and labouring community. Where it is found that 
when his circumstances have ceased to be exceptional the negro 
cannot live unassisted, there the Federal Government may 
fairly and wisely step in and say, " We will not keep you ; but 
we will carry you to Liberia or to Hayti, if you will." 

It is clear that the Southern negroes must be given a decisive 
voice in the appointment of the legislatures by which they are 
to be ruled, or that the North must be prepared to back up by 
force of opinion, or, if need be, by force of arms, the Federal 
Executive, when it insists on the Civil Rights Bill being set in 



CHAP. II.] THE NEGRO. ai 

action at the South. Government through the negroes is the 
only way to avoid government through an army, which would 
be dangerous to the freedom of the North. It is safer for 
America to trust her slaves than to trust her rebels — safer to 
enfranchise than to pardon. 

A reading and writing basis for the suffrage in the Southern 
States is an absurdity. Coupled with pardons to the rebels, it 
would allow the " boys-in-grey" — the soldiers of the Confederacy 
— to control nine States of the Union; it would render the 
education of the freedmen hopeless. For the moment, it would 
entirely disfranchise the negroes in six States, whereas it is 
exactly for the moment that negro suffrage is in these States 
necessary ; while, if the rebels were admitted to vote, and the 
negroes excluded from the poll, the Southern representatives, 
united with the Copperhead wing of the democratic party, might 
prove to be strong enough to repudiate the Federal debt. This 
is one of a dozen dangers. 

An education basis for the suffrage, though pretended to be 
impartial, would be manifestly aimed against the negroes, and 
would perpetuate the antipathy of colour to which the war is 
supposed to have put an end. To education such a provision 
would be a death blow. If the negroes were to vote as soon 
as they could read, it is certain that the planters would take 
good care that they never should read at all. 

That men should be able to examine into the details of 
politics is not entirely necessary to the working of repre- 
sentative government. It is sufficient that they should be 
competent to select men to do it for them. In the highest 
form of representative government, where all the electors are 
both intelhgent, educated, and alive to the politics of the time, 
then the member returned must tend more and more to be a 
delegate. That has always been the case with the Northern and 
Western members in America, but never with those returned by 
the Southern States ; and so it will continue, whether the 
Southern elections be decided by negroes or by "mean whites." 

In Warren county, Mississippi, near Vicksburg, is a plantation 
which belongs to Joseph Davis, the brother of the rebel Presi- 
dent. This he has leased to Mr. Montgomery — once his slave — 
in order that an association of blacks may be formed to cultivate 



22 GREATER BRITAIN, ' [chap. it. 

the plantation on co-operative principles. It is to be managed 
by a council elected by the community at large, and a voluntary 
poor-rate and embankment rate are to be levied on the people 
by themselves. 

It is only a year since the termination of the war, and the 
negroes are already in possession of schools, village corporations, 
of the Metayer system, of co-operative farms ; all this tells of 
rapid advance, and the conduct and circulation of the New 
Orleans Tribune^ edited and published by negroes, and selling 
10,000 copies daily, and another 10,000 of the weekly issue, 
speaks well for the progress of the blacks. If the Montgomery 
experiment succeeds, their future is secure. 



33 



CHAPTER III. 

The South. 

The political forecasts and opinions which were given me 
upon plantations, were, in a great measure, those indicated in 
my talk with the Norfolk " loafers." On the history of the 
commencement of the rebellion there was singular unanimity. 
" Virginia never meant to quit the Union ; we were cheated by 
those rascals of the South. When we did go out, we were left 
to do all the fighting. Why, sir, I've seen a Mississippian 
division run away from a single Yankee regiment." 

As I heard much the same story from the North Carolinans 
that I met, it would seem as though there was little union 
among the seceding States. The legend upon the first of all 
the secession flags that were hoisted, was typical of this devotion 
to the fortunes of the State : " Death to abolitionists ; South 
Carolina goes it alone /' and during the whole war, it was not 
the rebel colours, but the palmetto emblem, or other State 
devices, that the ladies wore. 

About the war itself but little is said, though here and there I 
met a man who would tell camp stories in the Northern style. 
One planter who had been " out " himself, went so far as to say 
to me : " Our officers were good, but considering that our rank 
and file were just ' white-trash,' and that they had to fight 
regiments of New England Yankee volunteers, with all their 
best blood in the ranks, and Western sharpshooters together, 
it's only wonderful how we weren't whipped sooner." 

As for the future, the planters' policy is a simple one : " Reckon 
we're whipped, so we go in now for the old flag ; only those 
Yankee rogues must give us the control of our own people." 
The one result of the war has been, as they believe, the 



24 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. in. 

abolition of slavery ; otherwise the situation is unchanged. 
The war is over, the doctrine of secession is allowed to fall into 
the background, and the ex-rebels claim to step once more 
into their former place, if, indeed, they admit that they ever 
left it. 

Every day that you are in the South, you come more and 
rnore to see that the " mean whites" are the controlling power. 
The landowners are not only few in number, but their apathy 
during the present crisis is surprising. The men who demand 
their re-admission to the government of eleven states are un- 
kempt, fierce-eyed fellows, not one whit better than the brancos 
of Brazil ; the very men, strangely enough, who themselves, in 
their " Leavenworth constitution," first began disfranchisement, 
declaring that the qualification for electors in the new State of 
Kansas should be the taking oath to uphold the infamous 
Fugitive Slave Law. 

These " mean whites " were the men who brought about 
secession. The planters are guiltless of everything but criminal 
indifference to the deeds that were committed in their name. 
Secession was the act of a pack of noisy demagogues ; but a 
false idea of honour brought round a majority of the Southern 
people, and the infection of enthusiasm carried over the 
remainder. 

When the war sprang up, the old Southern contempt for the 
Yankees broke out into a fierce burst of joy, that the day had 
come for paying off old scores. " We hate them, sir," said an 
old planter to me. " I wish to God that the Mayflower had 
sunk with all hands in Plymouth Bay !" 

Along with this violence of language, there is a singular kind 
of cringing to the conquerors. Time after time I heard the 
complaint, " The Yanks treat us shamefully, I reckon. We 
come back to the Union, and give in on every point ; we 
renounce slavery; we consent to forget the past; and yet they 
won't restore us to our rights." Whenever I came to ask what 
they meant by " rights," I found the same haziness that every- 
where surrounds that word. The Southerners seem to think 
that men may rebel and fight to the death against their country, 
and then, being beaten, lay down their arms and walk quietly 
to the polls along with law-abiding citizens, secure in the 



CHAP. III.] THE SOUTH. 25 

protection of the Constitution which for years they have fought 
to subvert. 

At Richmond I had a conversation which may serve as a 
specimen of what one hears each moment from the planters. 
An old gentleman with whom I was talking politics opened at 
me suddenly : " The Radicals are going to give the ballot to 
our niggers to strengthen their party, but they know better than 
to give it to their Northern niggers." 

Z). — ''But Surely there's a difference in the cases." 

The Planter. — "You're right — there is; but not your way. 
The difference is, that the Northern niggers can read and write, 
and even lie with consistency, and ours can't." ♦ 

D. — " But there's the wider difference, that negro suffrage 
down here is a necessity, unless you are to rule the country 
that's just beaten you." 

The Planter. — "Well, there of course we differ. We rebs 
say we fought to take our States out of the Union. The Yanks 
beat us ; so our States must still -be in the Union. If so, why 
shouldn't our representatives be unconditionally admitted ?" 

Nearer to a conclusion we of course did not come, he 
declaring that no man ought to vote who had not education 
enough to understand the constitution ; I, that this was good 
prima facie evidence against letting him vote, but that it might 
be rebutted by the proof of a higher necessity for his voting. 
As a planter said to me, " The Southerners prefer soldier rule 
to nigger rule ;" but it is not a question of what they prefer, 
but of what course is necessary for the safety of the Union 
which they fought to destroy. 

Nowhere in the Southern States did I find any expectation 
of a fresh rebellion. It is only Englishmen who ask whether 
" the South " will not fight " once more." The South is dead 
and gone; there can never be a " South " again, but only so 
many Southern States. " The South " meant simply the slave 
country ; and slavery being dead, it is dead. Slavery gave us 
but two classes besides the negroes — planters and " mean 
whites." The great planters were but a few thousand in number ; 
they are gone to Canada, England, Jamaica, California, Colo- 
rado, Texas. The " mean whites " — the true South — are im- 
possible in the face of free labour j they must work or starve. 



26 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iit. 

If they work, they will no longer be " mean whites," but 
essentially Northerners — that is, citizens of a democratic re- 
public, and not oligarchists. 

As the Southerners admit that there can be no further war, 
it would be better even for themselves that they should allow 
the sad record of their rising to fade away. Their newspapers 
continue to make use of language which nothing could excuse, 
and which, in the face of the magnanimity of the conquerors, is 
disgraceful. In a Mobile paper I have seen a leader which 
describes with hideous minuteness, Lincoln, Lane, John Brown, 
and Dostie playing whist in hell. A Texas cutting which I 
have is less blasphemous, but not less vile : " The English 
language no longer affords terms in which to curse a snivelling 
weazen-faced piece of humanity generally denominated a Yankee. 
We see some about here sometimes, but they skulk around, 
like sheep-killing dogs, and associate mostly with niggers. They 
whine and prate, and talk about the judgment of God, as if 
God had anything to do with them." The Southerners have 
not even the wit or grace to admit that the men who beat 
them were good soldiers ; " blackguards and braggarts," "cravens 
and thieves," are common names for the men of the Union 
army. I have in my possession an Alabama paper in which 
General Sheridan, at that time the commander of the military 
division which included the State, is styled " a short-tailed slimy 
tadpole of the later spawn, the blathering disgrace of an honest 
father, and everlasting libel on his Irish blood, the synonym of 
infamy, and scorn of all brave men." While I was in Virginia, 
one of the Richmond papers said : " This thing of ' loyalty ' 
will not do for the Southern man." 

The very day that I landed in the South, a dinner was given 
at Richmond by the " Greys " — a volunteer corps which had 
fought through the rebellion. After the roll of honour, or list 
of men killed in battle, had been read, there were given as 
toasts, by rebel officers: "Jeff. Davis — the caged eagle; the 
bars confine his person, but his great spirit soars j" and " The 
conquered banner, may its resurrection at last be as bright and 
as glorious as theirs — the dead." 

It is in the face of such words as these that Mr. Johnson, 
the most unteachable of mortals, asks men who have sacrificed 



CHAP, m.] THE SOUTE. 27 

their sons to restore the Union, to admit the ex-rebels to a 
considerable share in the government of the nation, even if 
they are not to monopolize it, as they did before the war. 
His conduct seems to need the Western editor's defence : " He 
must be kinder honest-like, he aire sich a tarnation foolish 
critter." 

It is clear from the occurrence of such dinners, the publica- 
tion of such paragraphs and leaders as those of which I have 
spoken, that there is no military tyranny existing in the South. 
The country is indeed administered by military commanders, 
but it is not ruled by troops.^'' Before we can give ear to the 
stories that are afloat in Europe of the " government of major- 
generals," we must believe that five millions of Englishmen 
inhabiting a country as large as Europe are crushed down by 
some ten thousand men — about as many as are needed to 
keep order in the single town of Warsaw. The Southerners 
are allowed to rule themselves ; the question now at issue is 
merely whether they shall also rule their former slaves, the 
negroes. 

I hardly felt myself out of the reach of slavery and rebellion 
till, steaming up the Potomac from Acquia Creek, by the grey 
dawn, I caught sight of a grand pile towering over a city from 
a magnificent situation on the brow of a long rolling hill. 
Just at the moment, the sun, invisible as yet to us below, struck 
the marble dome and cupola, and threw the bright gilding into 
a golden blaze, till the Greek shape stood out upon the blue 
sky, glowing like a second sun. The city was Washington ; the 
palace with the burnished cupola, the Capitol ; and within two 
hours I was present at the "hot-weather sitting" of the 39th 
Congress of the United States. 

* Civil government is now restored throughout the greater portion of the 
South.— 1869. 



28 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iv. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Empire State. 

At the far south of New York City, where the Hudson and 
East River meet to form the inner bay, is an ill-kept park that 
might be made the loveliest garden in the world. Nowhere do 
the features that have caused New York to take rank as the 
first port of America stand forth more clearly. The soft evening 
breeze tells of a climate as good as the world can show ; the 
setting sun floods with light a harbour secure and vast, formed 
by the confluence of noble streams, and girt with quays at 
which huge ships jostle ; the rows of 500-pounder Rodmans at 
" The Narrows " are tokens of the nations strength and wealth ; 
and the yachts, as well handled as our own, racing into port 
from an ocean regatta, give evidence that there are Saxons in 
the land. At the back is the city, teeming with life, humming 
with trade, muttering with the thunder of passage. Opposite, 
in Jersey City, people say : " Every New Yorker has come a 
good half-hour late into the world, and is trying all his life to 
make it up." The bustle is immense. 

All is so un-English, so foreign, that hearing men speaking 
what Czar Nicholas was used to call " the American tongue," I 
wheel round, crying — "Dear me ! if here are not some English 
folk !" astonished as though I had heard French in Australia or 
Italian in Timbuctoo. 

The Englishman who, coming to America, expects to find 
cities that smell of home, soon learns that Baker Street itself, 
or Portland Place, would not look English in the dry air of a 
continent four thousand miles across. New York, however, is 
still less English than is Boston, Philadelphia, or Chicago — her 
people are as little Saxon as her streets. Once Southern, with 



CHAP. IV.] THE EMPIRE STATE. 29 

the brand of slavery deeply printed in the foreheads of her 
foremost men, since the defeat of the rebellion New York has 
to the eye been cosmopolitan as any city of the Levant. All 
nationless to\vns are not alike : Alexandria has a Greek or an 
Italian tinge : San Francisco an English tone, with something 
of the heartiness of our Elizabethan times ; New York has a 
deep Latin shade, and the democracy of the empire-state is of 
the French, not of the American or English type. 

At the back, here, on the city side, are tall gaunt houses, 
painted red, like those on the quay at Dort or on the Boompjes 
at Rotterdam, the former dwellings of the " Knickerbockers " 
of New Amsterdam, the founders of New York, but now for- 
gotten. There may be a few square yards of painting, red or 
blue, upon the houses in Broadway ; there may be here and 
there a pagoda summer-house overhanging a canal ; once in a 
year you may run across a worthy descendant of the old Nether- 
landish families ; but in the main the Hollanders in America 
are as though they had never been : to find the memorials of 
lost Dutch empire, we must search Cape Colony or Ceylon. 
The New York un-English tone is not Batavian. Neither the 
sons of the men who once lived in these houses, nor the Germans 
whose names are now upon the doors, nor, for the matter of 
that, we English, who claim New York as the second of our 
towns, are the to-day's New Yorkers. 

Here, on the water's edge, is a rickety hall, where Jenny Lind 
sang when first she landed — now the spot where strangers of 
another kind are welcomed to America. Every* true republican 
has in his heart the notion that his country is pointed out by 
God as a refuge for the distressed of all the nations. He has 
sprung himself from men who came to seek a sanctuary — from 
the Quakers, or the Catholics, or the pilgrims of the Mayflower. 
Even though they come to take the bread from his mouth, or 
to destroy his peace, it is his duty, he believes, to aid the immi- 
grants. Within the last twenty years there have landed at New 
York alone four million strangers. Of these two-thirds were 
Irish. 

While the Celtic men are pouring into New York and Boston, 
the New Englanders and New Yorkers, too, are moving. They 
are not dying. Facts are opposed to this portentous theory. 



10 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, i v. 

They are going west. The unrest of the Celt is mainly caused 
by discontent with his country's present, that of the Saxon by 
hope for his private future. The Irishman flies to New York 
because it lies away from Ireland ; the Englishman takes it upon 
his road to California. 

Where one race is dominant, immigrants of another blood 
soon lose their nationality. In New York and Boston the Irish 
continue to be Celts, for these are Irish cities. In Pittsburg, in 
Chicago, still more in the country districts, a few years make 
the veriest Paddy English. On the other hand, the Saxons are 
disappearing from the Atlantic cities, as the Spaniards have gone 
from Mexico. The Irish here are beating down the English, 
as the English have crushed out the Dutch. The Hollander's 
descendants in New York are English now ; it bids fair that 
the Saxons should be Irish. 

As it is, though the Celtic immigration has lasted only twenty 
years, the results are already clear : if you see a Saxon face upon 
the Broadway, you may be sure it belongs to a traveller, or to 
some raw EngHsh lad bound west, just landed from a Plymouth 
ship. We need not lay much stress upon the fact that all New 
Yorkers have black hair and beard : men may be swarthy and 
yet English. The ancestors of the Londoners of to-day, we 
are told, were yellow-headed roysterers ; yet not one man in 
fifty that you meet in Fleet Street or on Tower Hill is as fair 
as the average Saxon peasant. Doubtless, our English eastern 
counties were peopled in the main by low-Dutch and Flemings : 
the Sussex eyes and hair are rarely seen in Suffolk. The Puritans 
of New England are sprung from those of the "associated 
counties," but the victors of Marston Moor may have been 
,v-^.to!usins td those no less sturdy Protestants, the Hollanders who 
defended Leyden. It ii\ay be that they were our ancestors, 
those Dutchmen that we English crowded out of New Amsterdam 
— the very place where we are sharing the fate we dealt. The 
fiery temper of the new people of the American coast towns, 
their impatience of free government, are better proofs of Celtic 
blood than are the colour of their eyes and beard. 
, Year by year the towns grow more and more intensely Irish. 
Already of every four births in Boston, one only is American. 
There are 120,000 foreign to 70,000 native voters in New York 



CHAP. IV.] THE EMPIRE STATE, 31 

and Brooklyn. Montreal and Richmond are fast becoming 
Celtic ; Philadelphia — shades of Penn ! — can only be saved by 
the aid of its Bavarians. Saxon Protestantism is departing with 
the Saxons : the revenues of the empire-state are spent upon 
Catholic asylums ; plots of city land are sold at nominal rates 
for the sites of Catholic cathedrals^ by the " city j-Z-^-fathers," as 
they are called. Not even in the West does the Latin Church 
gain ground more rapidly than in New York city : there are 
80,000 professing Catholics in Boston. 

When is this drama, of which the first scene is played in 
Castle Gardens, to have its close ? The matter is grave enough 
already. Ten years ago, the third and fourth cities of the world, 
New York and Philadelphia, were as English as our London : 
the one is Irish now ; the other all but German. Not that the 
Quaker city will remain Teutonic : the Germans, too, are going 
out upon the land ; the Irish alone pour in unceasingly. All 
great American towns will soon be Celtic, while the country 
continues English : a fierce and easily-roused people will throng 
the cities, while the law-abiding Saxons who till the land will 
cease to rule it. Our relations with America are matters of 
small moment by the side of the one great question : Who are 
the Americans to be ? 

Our kinsmen are by no means blind to the dangers that hang 
over them. The " know-nothing " movement failed, but Pro- 
tection speaks the same voice in its opposition to commercial 
centres. If you ask a Western man why he, whose interest is 
clearly in Free Trade, should advocate Protection, he fires out : 
"Free Trade is good for our American pockets, but it's death 
to us Americans. All your Bastiats and Mill§ .wonlti-touch the 
fact that to us Free Trade must mean salt^^alj^^fespoiiimf a^^T^^^'^ 
the ascendency of New York and Bos,^0l^^ Which is better for ^^^ -^ 
the country — one New York, or ten/ contented Pittsburgs and ' 

ten industrious Lowells ?" ^'^^ABlK-li'"' "7n 

The danger to our race and to the world from Irish ascendency 
is perhaps less imminent than that to the republic. In January 
1862, the Mayor, Fernando Wood, the eldct of the " Mozart "ry ^" 
democracy, deliberately proposed the secessiott-irornthe Union--: 
of New York City. Of all the Northern States, NewTork alone 
was a dead weight upon the loyal people during the war of the 




32 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. iv. 

rebellion. The constituents of Wood were the very Fenians 
whom in our ignorance we call " American." It is America 
that Fenianism invades from Ireland — not England from 
America. 

It is no unfair attack upon the Irish to represent them as 
somewhat dangerous inhabitants for mighty cities. Of the 
sixty thousand persons arrested yearly in New York, three- 
fourths are alien born : two-thirds of these are Irish. Nowhere 
else in all America are the Celts at present masters of a city 
government — nowhere is there such corruption. The purity of 
the government of Melbourne — a city more democratic than 
New York — proves that the fault does not lie in democracy : it 
is the universal opinion of Americans that the Irish are alone 
responsible. 

The State legislature is falling into the hands of the men who 
control the city council. They tell a story of a traveller on the 
Hudson River Railroad, who, as the train neared Albany — the 
capital of New York — said to a somewhat gloomy neighbour, 
" Going to the State legislatur' ?" getting for answer, " No, sir ! 
It's not come to that with me yet. Only to the State prison !" 
Americans are never slow to ridicule the denationalization of 
New York. They tell you that during the war the colonel of 
one of the city regiments said : " I've the best blood of eight 
nations in the ranks." " How's that ?" " I've Enghsh, Irish, 
Welsh, Scotch, French, Italians, Germans." " Guess that's only 
seven." " Swedes," suggested some one. " No, no Swedes," 
said the colonel. "Ah! I have it: I've some Americans." 
Stories such as this the rich New Yorkers are nothing loth to 
tell ; but they take no steps to check the denationalization they 
lament. Instead of entering upon a reform of their municipal 
institutions, they affect to despise free government ; instead of 
giving, as the oldest New England families have done, their 
tone to the State schools, they keep entirely aloof from school 
and State alike. Sending their boys to Cambridge, Berlin, 
Heidelberg, anywhere rather than to the colleges of their native 
land, they leave it to learned pious Boston to supply the West 
with teachers, and to keep up Yale and Harvard. Indignant 
if they are pointed at as " no Americans," they seem to sepa- 
rate themselves from everything that is American : they spend 



I llilllllill 



CHAP. IV.] THE EMPIRE STATE. 33 

summers In England, winters in Algeria, springs in Rome, and 
Coloradans say with a sneer, " Good New-Yorkers go to Paris 
when they die." 

Apart from nationality, there is danger to free government 
both in the growth of New York city, and in the gigantic 
fortunes of New-Yorkers. The income, they tell me, of one of 
my merchant friends is larger than the combined salaries of 
the President, the Governors, and the whole of the members of 
the legislatures of all the forty-five States and territories. As 
my informant said, " He could keep the governments of half-a- 
dozen States as easily as I can support my half-dozen children." 

There is something, no doubt, of the exaggeration of political 
jealousy about the accounts of New York vice given in New 
England and down South, in the shape of terrible philippics. 
It is to be hoped that the over-statement is enormous, for sober 
men are to be found even in New York who will tell you that 
this city outdoes Paris in every form of profligacy as completely 
as the French capital outherods imperial Rome. There is here- 
no concealment about the matter ; each inhabitant at once 
admits the truth of accusations directed against his neighbour. 
If the new-men, the "petroleum aristocracy," are second to 
none in their denunciations of the Irish, these in their turn 
unite with the oldest famihes in thundering against "Shoddy." 

New York life shows but badly in the summer-time ; it is 
seen at its worst when studied at Saratoga. With ourselves, 
men have hardly ceased to run from business and pleasures 
worse than toil to the comparative quiet of the country house." 
Among New-Yorkers there is not even the affectation of a 
search for rest ; the flight is from the drives and restaurants of 
New York to the gambling halls of Saratoga; from winning 
piles of greenbacks to losing heaps of gold ; from cotton 
gambling to roulette or faro. Long Branch is still more vulgar 
in its vice ; it is the Margate, Saratoga the Homburg, of 
America. 

" Shoddy " is blamed beyond what it deserves when the 
follies of New York society are laid in a body at its door. If 
it be true that the New York drawing-rooms are the best 
guarded in the world, it is also true that entrance is denied as 
rigidly to intellect and eminence as to wealth. If exclusiveness 

D 



34 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iv. 

be needed, affectation can at least do nothing towards sub- 
duing " Shoddy." Mere cHque-ism, disgusting everywhere, is 
ridiculous in a democratic town ; its rules of conduct are as 
out of place as kid gloves in the New Zealand bush, or gold 
scabbards on a battle-field. 

Good meat, and drink, and air give strength to the men and 
beauty to the women of a moneyed class ; but in America these 
things are the inheritance of every boy and girl, and give their 
owners no advantage in the world. During the rebellion, the 
ablest generals and bravest soldiers of the North sprang, not 
from the merchant families, but from the farmer folk. Without 
special merit of some kind, there can be no such thing as aristo- 
cracy. 

Many American men and women, who have too little nobility 
of soul to be patriots, and too little understanding to see that 
theirs is already, in many points, the master country of the 
globe, come to you, and bewail the fate which has caused them 
to be born citizens of a republic, and dwellers in a country 
where men call vices by their names. The least educated of 
their countrj-^men, the only grossly vulgar class that America 
brings forth, they fly to Europe " to escape democracy," and 
pass their lives in Paris, Pau, or Nice, living libels on the country 
they are believed to represent. 

Out of these discordant elements, Cubans, Knickerbockers, 
Germans, Irish, "first famihes," " Petroleum," and " Shoddy," 
we are forced to construct our composite idea — New York. 
The Irish numerically predominate, but we have no experience 
as to what should be the moral features of an Irish city, for 
Dublin has always been in English hands ; possibly that which 
in New York appears to be cosmopolitan is merely Celtic. 
However it may be, this much is clear, that the humblest town- 
ship of New England reflects more truly the America of the past, 
the most chaotic village of Nebraska portrays more fully the 
hopes and tendencies of the America of the present, than do 
this huge State and city. 

If the political figure of New York is not encouraging, its 
natural beauty is singularly great. Those who say that America 
has no scenery, forget the Hudson, while they can never have 
explored Lake George, Lake Champlain, and the Mohawk. 



CHAP. IV.] THE EMPIRE STATE. 35 

That Poole's exquisite scene from the "Decameron," "Philo- 
mela's Song," could have been realized on earth I never dreamt 
until I saw the singers at a New-Yorker's villa on the Hudson 
grouped in the deep shades of a glen, from which there was 
an outlook upon the basaltic palisades and lake-like Tappan 
Zee. It was in some such spot that De Tocqueville wrote the 
brightest of his brilliant letters — that dated " Sing Sing " — for 
he speaks of himself as lying on a hill that overhung the 
Hudson, watching the white sails gleaming in the hot sun, and 
trying in vain to fancy what became of the river where it dis- 
appeared in the blue "highlands." 

That New York city itself is full of beauty the view from 
Castle Garden would suffice to show ; and by night it is not 
less lovely than by day. The harbour is illuminated by the 
coloured lanterns of a thousand boats, and the steam-whistles 
tell of a life that never sleeps. The paddles of the steamers 
seem not only to beat the water, but to stir the languid air and 
so provoke a breeze, and the lime-lights at the Fulton and Wall 
Street ferries burn so brightly that in the warm glare the eye 
reaches through the still night to the feathery acacias in the 
streets of Brooklyn. The view is as southern as the people : 
we have not yet found America. 



D 



36 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. v. 



CHAPTER V. 

Cambridge Commencement. 

" Old Cambridge ! Long may she flourish !" proposed by a 
professor in the University of Cambridge, in America, and 
drunk standing, with three cheers, by the graduates and under- 
graduates of Harvard, is a toast that sets one thinking. 

Cambridge in America is not by any means a University of 
to-day. Harvard College, which, being the only "house," has 
engrossed the privileges, funds, and titles of the University, 
was founded at Cambridge, Mass., in 1636, only ninety years 
later than the greatest and wealthiest college of our Cambridge 
in old England. Puritan Harvard was the sister rather than 
the daughter of our own Puritan Emmanuel. Harvard himself, 
and Dunster, the first president of Harvard's College, were 
among the earliest of the scholars of Emmanuel. 

A toast from the Cambridge of new to the Cambridge of old 
England is one from younger to elder sister ; and Dr. Wendell 
Holmes, " The Autocrat," said as much in proposing it at the 
Harvard alumni celebration of 1866. 

Like other old institutions, Harvard needs a ten days' revo- 
lution : academic abuses flourish as luxuriantly upon American 
as on English soil, and University difficulties are much the 
same in either country. Here, as at home, the complaint is, 
that the men come up to the University untaught. To all of 
them their college is forced for a time to play the high-school ; 
to some she is never anything more than school. At Harvard 
this is worse than with ourselves : the average age of entry, 
though of late much risen, is still considerably under eighteen. 

The college is now aiming at raising gradually the standard 
of entry : when once all are excluded save men, and thinking 



I J II 



CHAP, v.] CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 37 

men, real students, such as those by whom some of the new 
Western Universities are attended, then Harvard hopes to leave 
drill-teaching entirely to the schools, and to permit the widest 
freedom in the choice of studies to her students. 

Harvard is not blameless in this matter. Like other Univer- 
sities, she is conservative of bad things as well as good; indeed, 
ten times within her walls would suffice to convince even an 
Englishman that Harvard clings to the times before the Revo- 
lution. 

Her conservatism is shown in many trivial things — in the 
dress of her janitors, in the cut of the grass-plots and college 
gates, in the conduct of the Commencement orations in the 
chapel. For the dainty little dames from Boston who came to 
hear their friends and brothers recite their disquisitions, none 
but Latin programmes were provided ; and the poor ladies were 
condemned to find such names as Bush, Maurice, Benjamin, 
Humphrey, and Underwood among the graduating youths, 
distorted into Bvsh, Mavritivs, Beniamin, H\Tnphredvs, Vnder- 
wood. 

This conservatism of the New England Universities had just 
received a sharp attack. In the Commencement oration. Dr. 
Hedges, one of the leaders of the Unitarian Church, had 
strongly pressed the necessity for a complete freedom of study 
after entry, a liberty to take up what line the student would, to 
be examined and to graduate in what he chose. He had 
instanced the success of Michigan University consequent upon 
the adoption of this plan ; he had pointed to the fact that of 
all the Universities in America, Michigan alone drew her 
students from every State. President Hill and ex-President 
Walker had endorsed his views. 

There is a special fitness in the reformers coming forward at 
this time. This year is the commencement of a new era at 
Harvard ] for at the request of the college staff, the connexion 
of the University with the commonwealth of Massachusetts 
has just been dissolved, and the members of the Board of 
overseers are in future to be elected by the University, instead 
of being nominated by the State. This being so, the question 
had been raised as to whether the Governor would come in 
state to Commencement, but he yielded to the wishes of the 



38 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. v. 

graduates, and came with the traditional pomp, attended by a 
staff in uniform, and escorted by a troop of Volunteer Lancers, 
whose scarlet coats and Polish caps recalled the times before 
the Revolution. 

While the ceremony was still in progress, I had been intro- 
duced to several of the foremost rowing men among the 
younger graduates of Harvard, and at its conclusion I accom- 
panied them to their river. They were in strict training for 
their University race with Yale, which was to come off in a 
week ; and as Cambridge had been beaten twice running, and 
this year had a better crew, they were wishful for criticisms on 
their style. Such an opinion as a stranger could offer was soon 
given ; they were dashing, fast, long in their stroke ; strong, 
considering their light weights, but terribly overworked. They 
have taken for a rule the old English notions as to training 
which have long since disappeared at home, and, looked upon 
as fanatics by their friends and tutors, they have all the fanatic's 
excess of zeal. 

Rowing and other athletics, with the exceptions of skating 
and base-ball, are both neglected and despised in America. 
When the smallest sign of a reaction appears in the New Eng- 
land colleges, there comes at once a cry from Boston that 
brains are being postponed to brawn. If New Englanders 
would look about them, they would see that their climate has 
of itself developed brains at the expense of brawn, and that, 
if national degeneracy is to be long prevented, brawn must in 
some way be fostered. The high shoulder, head-voice, and 
pallor of the Boston men are not incompatible with the posses- 
sion of the most powerful brain, the keenest wit ; but it is not 
probable that energy and talent will be continued in future 
generations sprung from the worn-out men and women of 
to-day. 

The prospect at present is not bright; year by year 
Americans grow thinner, lighter, and shorter-lived. Elian's 
Americans, we may remember, though they were greatly 
superior to the Greeks in stature, were inferior to them in 
length of life. The women show even greater signs of weak- 
ness than the men, fan d the high, undulating tones which are 
affectation in the French are natural to the ladies of America ; 



CHAP, v.] CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 39 

little can be expected of women whose only exercise is excessive 
dancing in over-heated rooms. 

The American summer, often tropical in its heat, has much 
to answer for, but it is the winter which makes the saddest 
havoc among the younger people, and the boys and girls at 
school. Cooped up all day in the close air of the heated 
schoolhouse, the poor children are at night made to run straight 
back to the furnace-dried atmosphere of home. The thermo- 
meter is commonly raised indoors to 80 or 90 degrees Fahr. 
The child is not only baked into paleness and sweated bit by 
bit to its death, but fed meantime, out of mistaken kindness, 
upon the most indigestible of dainties — pastry, hot dough-nuts, 
and sweetmeats taking the place of bread, and milk, and 
meat — and is not allowed to take the slightest exercise, except 
its daily run to school. Who can wonder that spinal diseases 
should prevail ? 

One reason why Americans are pale and aguish is that, as 
a people, they are hewers of primeval forest and tillers of 
virgin soil. These are the unhealthiest employments in the 
world ; the sun darts down upon the hitherto unreached mould, 
and sets free malarious gases, against which the new settlers 
have no antidotes. 

The rowing men of Harvard tell me that their clubs are 
still looked on somewhat coldly by a majority of the professors, 
who obstinately refuse to see that improved physical type is 
not an end, but a means, towards improvement of the mental 
faculties, if not in the present, at least in the next generation. 
As for the moral training in the virtues of obedience and com- 
mand, for which a boat's crew is the best of schools, that is 
not yet understood at Harvard, where rowing is confined to the 
half-dozen men who are to represent the college in the annual 
race, and the three or four more who are being trained to 
succeed them in the crew. Rowing in America is what it was 
till ten years since at old Cambridge, and is still at Oxford — ■ 
not an exercise for the majority of the students, but a pursuit 
for a small number. Physical culture is, however, said to be 
making some small progress in the older States, and I myself 
saw signs of the tendency in Philadelphia. The war has done 
some good in this respect, and so has the influx of Canadians 



40 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. v. 

to Chicago. Cricket is still almost an unknown thing, except 
in some few cities. When I was coming in to Baltimore by 
train, we passed a meadow in which a match was being played. 
A Southerner to whom I was talking at the time, looked at the 
players, and said with surprise : " Reckon they've got a 
wounded man ther', front o' them sticks, sah." I found that he 
meant the batsman, who was wearing pads. 

One of the most brilliant of Harvard's thinkers has taken 
to carpentry as a relief to his mental toil ; her most famed 
professor is often to be found working in his garden or his 
farm ; but such change of work for work is possible only to 
certain men. The generality of Americans need not only 
exercise, but relaxation ; still, with less physical, they possess 
greater mental vitality than ourselves. 

On the day that follows Commencement — the chief ceremony 
of the academic year — -is held once in three summers the 
" Alumni Celebration," or meeting of the past graduates of 
Harvard — a touching gathering always, but peculiarly so in 
these times that follow on the losses of the war. 
I' The American college informal organizations rest upon the 

m% unit of the "class." The "class" is what at Cambridge is 

jl called "men of the same year" — men who enter together and 

graduate together at the end of the regular course. Each class 
■; of a large New England College, such as Harvard, will often 

possess an association of its own; its members will dine to- 
gether once in five years or ten — men returning from Europe 
and from the Far West to be present at the gathering. 

Harvard is strong in the affections of the New England 
people — ^her faults are theirs ; they love her for them, and keep 
her advantages to themselves, for in the whole list of graduates 
for this year I could find only two Irish names. 

Here, at the Alumni Celebration, a procession was marshalled 
in the library in which the order was by classes ; the oldest 
class of which there were living members being called the first. 
"Class of 1797 !" and two old white-haired gentlemen tottered 
from the crowd, and started on their march down the central 
aisle, and out bareheaded into the blaze of one of the hottest 
days that America had ever known. " Class of 1800 !" missing 
two years, in which all the graduates were dead ; and out came 



:i 



1 



II 1 1 1 



CHAP, v.] CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 41 

one, the sole survivor. Then came " 1803," and so on, to the 
stalwart company of the present year. When the classes of 1859 
and i860, and of the war-years were called, those who marched 
out showed many an empty sleeve. 

The present triennial celebration is noteworthy not only for 
the efforts of the University reformers, but also for the founda- 
tion of the Memorial Hall dedicated as a monument to those 
sons of Harvard who fell while serving their country in the 
suppression of the late rebellion. The purity of their patriotism 
hardly needed illustration by the fire of young Everett, or the 
graceful speech of Dr. Holmes. Even the splendid oratory of 
Governor Bullock could do little more than force us to read for 
ourselves the Roll of Honour, and see how many of Harvard's 
most distinguished younger men died for their country as 
privates of Massachusetts Volunteers. 

There was a time, as England knows, when the thinking men 
of Boston, and the Cambridge professors, Emerson, Russell 
Lowell, Asa Gray, and a dozen more of almost equal fame, 
morally seceded from their country's councils, and were followed 
in their secession by the younger men. " The best men in 
America stand aloof from pohtics," it was said. 

The country from which these men seceded was not the 
America of to-day : it was the union which South Carolina 
ruled. From it the Cambridge professors " came out," not 
because they feared to vex their nerves with the shock of public 
argument and action, but because the course of the slaveholders 
was not their course. Hating the wrongs they saw but could 
not remedy, they separated themselves from the wrong-doers ; — 
another matter, this, from the " hating hatred " of our culture 
class in England. 

In 1863 and 1864, there came the reckoning. When America 
was first brought to see the things that had been done in her 
name, and at her cost, and, rising in her hitherto unknown 
strength, struck the noblest blow for freedom that the world has 
seen, the men who had been urging on the movement from 
without at once re-entered the national ranks, and m.arched to 
victory. Of the men who sat beneath Longfellow, and Agassiz, 
and Emerson, whole battalions went forth to war. From Oberlin 
almost every male student and professor marched, and the uni- 



42 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. v. 

versity teaching was left in the women's hands. Out of 8000 
school teachers in Pennsylvania, of whom 300 alone were 
draughted, 3000 volunteered for the war. Everywhere the 
students were foremost among the Volunteers, and from that 
time forward America and her thinkers Avere at one. 

The fierce passions of this day of wakening have not been 
suffered to disturb the quiet of the academic town. Our Eng- 
lish Universities have not about them the classic repose, the air 
of study, that belong to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Those who 
have seen the lanes of Leyden, and compared them with the 
noisy Oxford High Street, will understand what I mean when I 
say that our Cambridge comes nearest to her daughter-town ; 
but even the English Cambridge has a bustling street or two, 
and a weekly market-day, while Cambridge in New England is 
one great academic grove, buried in a philosophic calm which 
our University towns can never rival so long as men resort to 
them for other purposes than work. 

It is not only in the Harvard precincts that the oldness of 
New England is to be remarked. Although her people are 
everywhere in the vanguard of all progress, their country has a 
look of gable-ends and steeple-hats, while their laws seem fresh 
from the hands of Alfred. In all England there is no city which 
has suburbs so grey and venerable as are the elm-shaded towns 
round Boston : — Dorchester, Chelsea, Nahant, and Salem, each 
seems more ancient than its fellow ; the people speak the Eng- 
lish of Elizabeth, and joke about us, " speaks good English 

for an Englishman." 

In the country districts, the winsome villages that nestle in 
the dells seem to have been there for ten centuries at least ; 
and it gives one a shock to light on such a spot as Bloody 
Brook, and to be told that only one hundred and ninety years 
ago Captain Lathrop was slain there by Red Indians, with 
eighty youths, " the flower of Essex county," as the Puritan 
history says. 

The warnings of Dr. Hedges, in reference to the strides of 
Michigan, have taken the New Englanders by surprise. Secure, 
as they believed, in their intellectual supremacy, they forgot 
that in a federal union the moral and physical primacy will 
generally both reside in the same State. The commonwealth 



CHAP, v.] CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 43 

of Massachusetts, at one time the foremost upholder of the 
doctrine of State rights, will soon be seen once more acting as 
its champion — this time on behalf of herself and her five sister 
States. 

Were the six New England commonwealths grouped together 
in a single State, it would still have only three-fourths of the 
population of New York, and about an equal number of inha.- 
bitants with Pennsylvania. The State of Rhode Island is one- 
fourth the size of many a single Californian county. Such facts 
as these will not be long lost sight of in the West ; and when a 
divergence of interests springs up, Ohio will not suffer her voice 
in the senate to continue to be neutralised by that of Connec- 
ticut or Rhode Island. Even if the senate be allowed to remain 
untouched, it is certain that the redistribution of seats conse- 
quent upon the census of 1870 will completely transfer political 
power to the central States. That New England will by this 
change inevitably lose her hold upon the destinies of the whole 
Union is not so clear. The influence for good of New England 
upon the West has been chiefly seminal ; but not for that the 
less enormous. Go into a State such as Michigan, where half 
the people are immigrants — where, of the remaining moiety, 
the greater part are born Westerners, and apparently in no 
way of New England — and you will find that the inhabitants 
are earnest. God-fearing men, with a New England tone of 
profound manliness and conviction running through everything 
they say and do. The colleges in which they have been reared 
are directed, you will find, by New England professors, men 
trained in the classic schools of Harvard, Yale, or Amherst; 
the ministers under whom they sit are, for the most part, Boston 
men ; the books they read are of New England, or old English 
of the class from which the writers of the Puritan States them- 
selves have drawn their inspiration. To New England is chiefly 
due, in short, the making of America a godly nation. 

It is something in this age to come across a people who 
believe strongly in anything, and consistently act upon their 
beliefs : the New Englanders are such a race. Thoroughly 
God-fearing States are not so common that we can afford to 
despise them when found ; and nowhere does religion enter 
more into daily life than in Vermont or Massachusetts. 



44 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. v. 

The States of the Union owe so large a debt of gratitude to 
New England, that on this score alone they may refrain from 
touching her with sacrilegious hands. Not to name her previ- . 
ous sacrifices, the single little State of Massachusetts — one-fourth 
the size of Scotland, and but half as populous as Paris — sent 
during the rebellion a hundred and fifty regiments to the field. 

It was to Boston that Lincoln telegraphed when, in 1861, at 
a minute's notice, he needed men for the defence of Washing- 
ton. So entirely were Southerners of the opinion that the New 
Englanders were the true supporters of the old flag, that 
" Yankee " became a general term for loyalists of any State. 
America can never forget the steady heroism of New England 
during the great struggle for national existence. 

The unity that has been the chief cause of the strength of 
the New England influence is in some measure sprung from 
the fact that these six States are completely shut ofl" from all 
America by the single State of New York, alien from them in 
political and moral life. Every Yankee feels his country 
bounded by the British, the Irish, and the sea. 

In addition to the homogeneousness of isolation, the New 
Englanders, like the Northern Scotch, have the advantages of a 
bad climate and a miserable soil. These have been the true 
agents in the development of the energy, the skill, and fortitude 
of 'the Yankee people. In the war, for instance, it was plain 
that the children of the poor and rugged North-Eastern States 
were not the men to be beaten by the lotus-eaters of Louisiana 
when they were doing battle for what they believed to be a 
righteous cause. 

One eff"ect of the poverty of soil with which New England 
is afllicted has been that her sons have wandered from end to 
end of the known world, engaging in every trade, and suc- 
ceeding in all. Sometimes there is in their migrations a re- 
ligious side. Mormonism, although it now draws its forces 
from Great Britain, was founded in New England. At Brindisi, 
on my way home, I met three Yankees returning from a Maine 
colony lately founded at Jaffa, in expectation of the fulfilment 
of prophecy, and destruction of the Mohamedan rule. For the 
moment they are intriguing for a firman from the very Govern- 
ment upon the coming fall of which all their expectations have 



CHAP, v.] CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 45 

been based ; and these fierce fanatics are making money by- 
managing an hotel. One of them told me that the Jaffa 
colony is a " religio-commercial speculation." 

New England Yankees are not always so filled with the 
Puritan spirit as to reject unlawful means of money-making. 
Even the Massachusetts common schools and prim Connecticut 
meeting-houses turn out their black sheep into the world. At 
Centre Harbour, in New Hampshire, I met with an example of 
the " Yankee spawn " in a Maine man — a shrewd, sailor-looking 
fellow. He was sitting next me at the ordinary, and asked me 
to take a glass of his champagne. I declined, but chatted, and 
let out that I was a Britisher. 

" I was subject to your Government once for sixteen months," 
my neighbour said. 

"Really! Where?" 

" Sierra Leone. I was a prisoner there. And ver}' lucky 
too." 

"Why so?" I asked. 

" Because, if the American Government had caught me, they 
would have hanged me for a pirate. But I was7it a pirated 

With over great energy I struck in, " Of course not." 

My Neighbour — ^'- No ; I was a slaver.'' 

Idling among the hills of New Hampshire and the lakes 01 
Maine, it is impossible for a stranger starting free from pre- 
judice, not to end by loving the pious people of New England, 
for he will see that there could be no severer blow to the cause 
of freedom throughout the world than the loss by them of an 
influence upon American life and thought which has been one 
of unmixed good. Still, New England is not America. 



46 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vi. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Canada. 

There is not in the world a nobler outlook than that from off 
the terrace at Quebec. You stand upon a rock overhanging 
city and river, and look down upon the guardship's masts. 
Acre upon acre of timber comes floating down the stream 
above the city, the Canadian songs just reaching you upon the 
heights ; and beneath you are fleets of great ships, Enghsh, 
German, French, and Dutch, embarking the timber from the 
floating-docks. The Stars and Stripes are nowhere to be seen. 
Such are the distances in North America, that here, farther 
from the sea than is any city in Europe west of Moscow, we 
have a seaport town, with gunboats and three-decker ; morning 
and evening guns, and bars of " God save the Queen," to mark 
the opening and closing of the port. 

The St. Lawrence runs in a chasm in a flat table-land, through 
which some earlier Niagara seems to have cut for it a way. Some 
of the tributaries are in sight, all falling from a cliff into the 
deep still river. In the distance, seawards, a silver ribbon on 
the rock represents the falls of Montmorenci. Long villages 
of white tiny cots straggle along the roads that radiate from the 
city ; the great black cross of the French parish church showing 
reverently from all. 

On the north, the eye ranges to the rugged outlines of the 
Laurentian chain, composed of the oldest mountains in the 
world, at the foot of which is Lake St. Charles, full of fiord-like 
northern beauty, where at a later time I learnt to paddle the 
Indian canoe of birch bark. 

Leaving the citadel, we are at once in the European middle 
ages. Gates and posterns, cranky steps that lead up to lofty 



CHAP. VI.] CANADA. 47 

gabled houses, with sharp French roofs of burnished tin, Hke 
those of Liege ; processions of the Host ; altars decked with 
flowers ; statues of the Virgin ; sabots ; blouses ; and the 
scarlet of the British linesman — all these are seen in nan-ow 
streets and markets, that are graced Avith many a Cotentin lace 
cap, and all within forty miles of the down-east Yankee State 
of ISlaine. It is not far from New England to old France. 

Quebec Lower Town is very like St. Peter Port in Guernsey. 
Norman-French inhabitants, guarded by British troops, step- 
built streets, thronged fruit-market, and citadel upon a rock, 
frowning down upon the quays, are alike in each. A. slight 
knowledge of the Upper Normandy patois is not without its 
use j it procured me an offer of a pinch of snuff from an old 
hahitante on board one of the river boats. Her gesture was 
worthy of the ancien regime. 

There has been no dying-out of the race among the French 
Canadians. They number twenty times the thousands that 
they did a hundred years ago. The American soil has left 
their physical type, religion, language, laws, and habits abso- 
lutely untouched. They herd together in their rambling vil- 
lages, dance to the fiddle after mass on Sundays, as gaily as 
once did their Norman sires^ and keep up the fleur-de-lys and 
the memory of Montcalm. More French than the French are 
the Lower Canadian habitants. 

Not only here, but everywhere, a French "dependency" is 
France transported ; not a double of the France of to-day, but 
a mummy of the France of the time of the " colony's " founda- 
tion. In Saigon, you find Imperial France ; here the France 
of Louis Quatorze. The Englishman founds every^vhere a New 
England — new in thought as in soil ; the Frenchman carries 
with him to California, to Japan, an undying recollection of the 
Palais Royal. In San Francisco there lives a great French 
capitalist, who, since 1849, has been the originator of every 
successful Californian speculation. He cannot speak a word 
of English, and his greatest pleasure, in a country of fmits and 
wine is to bid his old French servant assure him, upon honour, 
that his whole dessert, from his claret to his olives, has been 
brought for him from France. There is much in the colonizing 
instinct of our race, but something, perhaps, in the considera- 



48 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vi. 

tion that the EngHsh are hardly happy enough at home to be 
ahvays looking back to what they have left in the old country. 

There is about this old France something of Dutch sleepiness 
and content. There is, indeed, some bustle in the market- 
place, where the grand old dames in snowy caps sit selling 
plums and pears ; there is much singing made over the lading of 
the timber ships ; there are rafts in hundreds gliding down the 
river; old French carts in dozens, creaking and wheezing on 
their lumbering way to town, with much clacking of whips and 
clappering of wooden shoes. All these things there are, but 
then there are these and more in Dol, and Quimper, and 
Morlaix — in all those towns which in Europe come nearest to 
old France. There is quiet bustle, subdued trade, prosperity 
deep, not noisy ; but the life is sleepy ; the rafts float, and are 
not tugged nor rowed ; the old Norman horses seem to draw 
the still older carts without an effort, and the very boys wear 
noisy shoes against their will, and make a clatter simply because 
they cannot help it. 

In such a scene it is impossible to forget that British troops 
are here employed as guardians of the only true French colony 
in the world against the inroads of the English race. " Nos 
institutions, notre langue, nos lois," is the motto of the habita7its. 
Their newspapers are filled with church celebrations, village 
fetes, " speech of M. le Cure at the harvest home," announce- 
ments by the " scherif," " address of M. Cartier at the conse- 
cration of Monseigneur Laroque," blessings of bells, of ships ; 
but of life, nothing — of mention of what is passing in America, 
not a word. One corner is given to the world outside America : 
" Emprunt Pontifical, Emission Americaine, quatre millions de 
piastres," heads a solid column of holy finance. The pulse- 
beat of the Continent finds no echo here. 

It is not only in political affairs that there is a want of energy 
in French or Lower Canada : in journeying from Portland to 
Quebec, the moment the frontier was passed, we seemed to 
have come from a land of life to one of death. No more bust- 
ling villages, no more keen-eyed farmers : a fog of unenterprise 
hung over the land ; roads were wanting, houses rude, swamps 
undrained, fields unweeded, plains untilled. 

If the Eastern Townships are a wilderness, they are not ^ 



CHAP. VI,] CAN'ADA. 49 

desert. The country on the Saguenay is both. At Quebec 
in summer it is hot — mosquitoes are not unknown : even at 
Tadousac, where the Saguenay flows into the St. Lawrence, 
there is sunhght as strong as that of Paris. Once in the 
northern river, all is cold, gloomy, arctic — no house, no boat, 
no sign of man's existence, no beasts, no birds, although the 
St. Lawrence swarms with ducks and loons. The river is a 
straight, cold, black fiord, walled-in by tremendous cliffs, which 
go sheer dowii into depths to which their height above water is 
as nothing ; two walls of rock, and a path of ice-cold, inky 
water. Fish there are, seal and salmon — that is all. The 
" whales and porpoises," which are advertised by the Tadousac 
folk as certain to " disport themselves daily in front of the 
hotel," are never to be seen in this earth-crack of the Saguenay. 

The cold for summer was intense ; nowhere in the world 
does the limit of ever-frozen ground come so far south as in 
the longitude of the Saguenay. At night we had a wonderful 
display of northern lights. A white column, towering to the 
mid-skies, rose, died away, and was succeeded by broad white 
clouds, stretching from east to west, and sending streamers 
northwards. Suddenly there shot up three fresh silvery columns 
in the north, north-west, and north-east, on which all the 
colours of the rainbow danced and played. After moonrise, 
the whole seemed gradually to fade away. 

At Ha Ha Bay, the head of navigation, I found a fur-buying 
station of the Hudson Bay Company ; but that association has 
enough to answer for without being charged with the desolation 
of the Saguenay. The company has not here, as upon the 
Red River, sacrificed colonists to minks and silver-foxes. 
There is something more blighting than a monopoly that op- 
presses Lower Canada. As I returned to Quebec, the boat 
that I was aboard touched at St. Paschal, now called Riviere 
du Loup, the St. Lawrence terminus'of the Grand Trunk Line : 
we found there immense wharves, and plenty of bells and 
crosses, but not a single ship, great or small. Even in Virginia 
I had seen nothing more disheartening. 

North of the St. Lawrence, religion is made to play as active 
a part in politics as in the landscape. Lower Canada, as we 
have seen, is French and Catholic ; Upper Canada is Scotch 

E 



50 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vi. 

and Presbyterian, though the EpiscopaHans are strong in wealth 
and the Irish Cathohcs in numbers. 

Had the CathoHcs been united, they might, since the fusion 
of the two Canadas, have governed the whole country : as it is, 
the Irish and French neither worship nor vote together, and of 
late the Scotch have had nearly their own way. 

Finding themselves steadily losing ground, the French threw 
in their lot with the scheme for the confederation of the pro- 
vinces, and their clergy took up the cause with a zeal which 
they justified to their flocks by pointing out that the alternative 
was anne^cation to America, and possible confiscation of the 
Church lands. 

Confederation of the provinces means separation of the 
Canadas, which regain each its Parliament ; and the French 
Catholics begin to hope that the Irish of Upper Canada, now 
that they are less completely overshadowed by the more nu- 
merous French, will again act with their co-religionists : the 
Catholic vote in the new confederation will be nearly half the 
whole. In Toronto, however, the Fenians are strong, and even 
in Montreal their presence is not unknown : it is a question 
whether the whole of the Canadian Irish are not disaff"ected. 
The Irish of the chief city have their Irish priests, their Cathe- 
dral of St. Patrick, while the French have theirs upon the 
Place d'Armes. The want of union may save the dominion 
from the establishment of Catholicism as a State Church. 

The confederation of our provinces was necessary, if British 
North America was to have a chance for life ; but it cannot be said 
to be accomplished while British Columbia and the Red River 
tract are not included. To give Canada an outlet on one side 
is something, but communication with the Atlantic is a small 
matter by the side of communication at once with Atlantic and 
Pacific through British territory. We shall soon have railways 
from Halifax to Lake Superior, and thence to the Pacific is 
but 1600 miles. It is true that the line is far north, and ex- 
posed to heavy snows and bitter cold ; but, on the other hand, 
it is well supplied with wood, and if it possess no such fertile 
tracts as that of Kansas and Colorado, it at least escapes the 
frightful wilds of Bitter Creek and Mirage Plains. 

We are now even left in doubt how long we shall continue 



CHAP. vi.J CANADA. 5 1 

to have so much as a route across the continent on paper. 
Since the cession of Russian America to the United States, a 
map of North America has been pubHshed in which the name 
of the Great Republic sprawls across the continent from Behring 
Straits to Mexico, with the " E " in " United " ominously near 
Vancouver Island, and the " T " actually planted upon British 
territory. If we take up the British Columhian^ we find the 
citizens of the main-land portion of the province proposing to 
sell the island for twenty million dollars to the States. 

Settled chiefly by Americans from Oregon and California, 
and situated, for purposes of reinforcement, immigration, and 
supply, at a distance of not less than twenty thousand miles 
from home, the British Pacific colonies can hardly be considered 
strong in their allegiance to the Crown : we have here the re- 
ductio ad absurdum of home government. 

Our hindering trade by tolerating the presence of two sets ot 
custom-houses, and two sets of coins between Halifax and Lake 
Superior, was less absurd than our altogether preventing its ex- 
tension now. Under a so-called confederation of our American 
possessions, we have left a country the size of civilized Europe, 
and nearly as large as the United States — lying, too, upon the 
track of commerce and high road to China — to be despotically 
governed by a company of traders in skins and peltries, and to 
remain as long as it so pleases them in the dead stillness and 
desertion needed to ensure the presence of fur-bearing beasts. 

" Red River " should be a second Minnesota, Halifax a 
second Liverpool, Esquimault a second San Francisco ; but 
double government has done its work, and the outposts of the 
line of trade are already in American, not British hands. The 
gold mines of Nova Scotia, the coal mines and forests of British 
Columbia, are owned in New England and New York, and the 
Californians are expecting the proclamation of an American 
territorial government in the capital of Vancouver Island. 

As Montana becomes peopled up, we shall hear of the " co- 
lonization " of Red River by citizens of the United States, such 
as preceded the hoisting of the '' lone star " in Texas, and the 
" bear flag " in California, by Fremont ; and resistance by the 
Hudson Bay Company will neither' be possible, nor, in the in- 
terests of civilization, desirable. 

E 2 



52 GREATER BRITAIN. ' [chap. vi. 

Even supposing a great popular awakening upon Colonial 
questions, and the destruction of the Hudson Bay monopoly, 
we could never make the Canadian dominion strong. With 
the addition of Columbia and Red River, British America 
would hardly be as powerful or populous as the two north- 
western states of Ohio and Illinois, or the single state of New 
York — one out of forty-five. " Help us for ten years, and then 
we'll help ourselves," the Canadians say ; " help us to become 
ten millions, and then we will stand alone ;" but this becoming 
ten millions is not such an easy thing. 

The ideas of most of us as to the size of the British territories 
are derived from maps of North America, made upon Merca- 
tor's projection, which are grossly out in high latitudes, though 
correct at the equator. The Canadas are made to appear at 
least twice their proper size, and such gigantic proportions are 
given to the northern parts of the Hudson territory that we are 
tempted to believe that in a country so vast there must be some 
little value. The true size is no more shown upon the map 
than is the nine-months' winter. 

To Upper Canada, which is no bad country, it is not for lack 
of asking that population fails to come. Admirably-executed 
gazettes give the fullest information about the British posses- 
sions in the most glowing of terms ; offices and agencies are 
established in Liverpool, London, Cork, Londonderry, and a 
dozen other cities ; Government immigration agents and infor- 
mation-offices are to be found in every town in Canada ; the 
Government emigrant is looked after in health, comfort, and 
religion ; directions of the fullest kind are given him in the 
matters of money, clothes, tools, baggage ; Canada, he is told 
by the Government papers, possesses perfect religious, political, 
and social freedom ; British subjects step at once into the exer- 
cise of political rights ; the winter is but bracing, the climate 
the healthiest in the world. Millions of acres of surveyed 
Crown lands are continually in the market. To one who 
knows what the northern forests are, there is perhaps something 
of satire in the statement that " there is generally on Crown 
lands an unlimited supply of the best fuel." What of that, 
however ? The intending emigrant knows nothing of the 
struggle With, the woods, and fuel is fuel in Old England. The 



CHAP. VI.] CANADA. 5 3 

mining of the precious metals, the fisheries, petroleum, all are 
open to the settler — let him but come. Reading these docu- 
ments, we can only rub our eyes, and wonder how it is that 
human selfishness allows the Canadian officials to disclose the 
wonders of their El Dorado to the outer world, and invite all 
men to share blessings which we should have expected them to 
keep as a close preserve for themselves and their nearest and 
dearest friends. Taxation in the States, the immigrants are 
told, is five and a half times what it is in Canada, two and a 
half times the English rate. Labourers by the thousand, mer- 
chants and farmers by the score, are said to be flocking into 
Canada to avoid the taxation of the Radicals. The average 
duration of life in Canada is 37 per cent, higher than in the 
States. Yet, in the face of all these facts, only twenty or two 
and twenty thousand immigrants come to Canada for three 
hundred thousand that flock annually to the States, and of the 
former many thousands do but pass through on their way to 
the Great West. Of the twenty thousand who land at Quebec 
in each year, but four and a half thousand remain a year in 
Canada ; and there are a quarter of a million of persons born 
in British America now naturalized in the United States. 

The passage of the immigrants to the Western States is not 
for want of warning. The Canadian Government advertise 
every Coloradan duel, every lynching in Montana, every Oppo- 
sition speech in Kansas, by way of teaching the immigrants to 
respect the country of which they are about to become free 
citizens. 

It is an unfortunate fact that these strange statements are not 
harmless — not harmless to Canada, I mean. The Provincial 
Government by these publications seems to confess to the 
world that Canada can live only by running down the great 
republic. Canadian sympathy for the rebellion tends to make 
us think that these Northern statesmen must not only share in 
our old-world confusion of the notions of right and wrong, but 
must be sadly short-sighted into the bargain. It is only by 
their position that they are blinded, for few countries have 
abler men than Sir James Macdonald, or sounder statesmen 
than Cartier or Gait ; but, like men standing on the edge of a 
clifl", Canadian statesmen are always wanting to jump off. Elad 



54 ' GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vi. 

Great Britian left them to their own devices, we should have 
had war with America in the spring of 1866. 

The position of Canada is in many ways anomalous : of the 
two chief sections of our race — that in Britain and that in 
America — the latter is again split in twain, and one division 
governed from across the Atlantic. For such government there 
is no pretext, except the wishes of the governed, who by the 
connexion gain men for their defence, and the opportunity of 
gratifying their spite for their neighbours at our expense. 
Those who ask why a connexion so one-sided, so opposed to 
the best interests of our race, should be suffered to continue, 
are answered, now that the argument of " prestige " is given up, 
that the Canadians are loyal, and that they hate the Americans, 
to whom, were it not for us, they must inevitably fall. That 
the Canadians hate the Americans can be no reason why we 
should spend blood and treasure in protecting them against the 
consequences of their hate. The world should have passed the 
time when local dislikes can be suffered to affect our policy 
towards the other sections of our race ; but even were it other- 
wise, it is hard to see how twelve thousand British troops, or a 
royal standard hoisted at Ottawa, can protect a frontier of two 
thousand miles in length from a nation of five and thirty 
millions. Canada, perhaps, can defend herself, but we most 
certainly cannot defend her : we provoke much more than we 
assist. 

As for Canadian " loyalty," it appears to consist merely of 
hatred towards America, for while we were fighting China and 
conquering Japan, that we might spread free trade, our loyal 
colonists of Canada set upon our goods protective duties of 
20 per cent, which they have now in some degree removed, only 
that they may get into their hands the smuggling trade carried 
on in breach of the laws of our ally, their neighbour. We 
might, at least, fairly insist that the connexion should cease, 
unless Canada will entirely remove her duties. 

At bottom it would seem as though no one gained by the 
retention of our hold on Canada. Were she independent, her 
borders would never again be wasted by Fenian hordes, and 
she would escape the terrible danger of being the battle-field in 
which European quarrels are fought out. Canada once repub- 



CHAP. VI.] CANADA. 55 

lican, the Monroe doctrine would be satisfied, and its most 
violent partisans would cease to advocate the adoption of other 
than moral means to merge her territories in the Union. An 
independent Canada would not long delay the railway across 
the continent to Puget Sound, which a British bureau calls im- 
possible. England would be relieved from the fear of a certain 
defeat by America in the event of war — a fear always harmful, 
even when war seems most unlikely ; — relieved, too, from the 
cost of such panics as those of 1861 and 1866. 

Did Canada stand alone, no offence that she could give 
America would be likely to unite all sections of that country in 
an attempt to conquer her ; while, on the other hand, such an 
attempt would be resisted to the death by an armed and brave 
people, four millions strong. As it is, any offence towards 
America committed by our agents, at any place or time, or 
arising out of the continual changes of policy and of ministry in 
Great Britain, united to the standing offence of maintaining the 
monarchical principle in North America, will bring upon un- 
happy Canada the whole American nation, indignant in some 
cause, just, or seeming just, and to be met by a people deceived 
into putting their trust in a few regiments of British troops, 
sufficient at the most to hold Quebec, and to be backed by 
reinforcements which could never come in time, did public 
opinion in Great Britain so mucli as permit their sailing. In 
all history there is nothing stranger than the narrowness of 
mind that has led us to see in Canada a piece of England, and 
in America a hostile country. There are more sons of British 
subjects in America than in Canada, by far; and the American 
looks upon the old country with a pride that cannot be shared 
by a man who looks to her to pay his soldiers. 

The independence of Canada would put an immediate end 
to much of the American jealousy of Great Britain — a con- 
sideration which of itself should outweigh any claim to protec- 
tion which the Canadians can have on us. The position which 
we have to set before us in our external dealings is, that we 
are no more fellow-countrymen of the Canadians than of the 
Americans of the North or West. 

The capital of the new dominion is to be Ottawa, known 
as " Hole in the Woods " among the friends of Toronto and 



56 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vi. 

Montreal, and once called Bytown. It consists of the huge Par- 
liament House, the Government printing-office, some houseless 
wildernesses meant for streets, and the hotel where the members 
of the Legislature "board." Such was the senatorial throng at 
the moment of my visit, that we were thrust into a detached 
building made of half-inch planks, with wide openings between 
the boards ; and as the French Canadian members were ex- 
cited about the resignation of Mr. Gait, indescribable chattering 
and bawHng filled the house. 

The view from the Parliament House is even more thoroughly 
Canadian than that from the terrace at Quebec — a view of a 
land of rapids, of pine forests, and of lumberers' homes,- full of 
character, but somewhat bleak and dreary ; even on the hottest 
summer's day, it tells of winter storms past and to come. On 
the far left are the island-filled reaches of the Upper Ottawa ; 
nearer, the roaring Chaudiere Falls, a mile across — a mile of 
walls of water, of sudden shoots, of jets, of spray. From the 
" cauldron " itself, into which we can hardly see, rises a column 
of rainbow-tinted mist, backed by distant ranges and black 
woods, now fast falling before the settler's axe. Below you is 
the river, swift, and covered with cream-like foam ; on the right, 
a gorge — the mouth of the Rideau Canal. 

When surveyed from the fittest points, the Chaudiere is but 
little behind Niagara j but it maybe doubted whether in any 
fall there is that which can be called siiblimity. Natural causes 
are too evident : water, rushing to find its level, falls from a 
ledge of rock. How different from a storm upon the coast, or 
from a September sunset, where the natural causes are so 
remote that you can bring yourself almost to see the immediate 
hand of God. It is excusable in Americans, who have no sea- 
coast worthy of the name, to talk of Niagara as the perfection 
of the sublime ; but it is strange that a people who have Birling 
Gap and Bantry Bay should allow themselves to be led by such 
a cry. 

Niagara has one beauty in which it is unapproached by the 
great Chaudiere : the awesome slowness with which the deep- 
green flood, in the centre of the Horseshoe Fall, rolls rather 
than plunges into the gulf 



57 



CHAPTER VII. 

University of Michigan. 

From the gloom of Buffalo, the smoke of Cincinnati, and the 
dirt of Pittsburg, I should have been glad to escape as soon as 
might be, even had not the death from cholera of 240 persons 
in a single day of my visit to the '' Queen City" warned me to 
fly north. From a stricken town, with its gutters full of chloride 
of lime, and fires burning in the public streets, to green Michi- 
gan, was a grateful change ; but I was full of sorrow at leaving 
that richest and most lovely of all States — Ohio. There is a 
charm in the park-like beauty of the Monongahela valley, 
dotted with vines and orchards, that nothing in Eastern America 
can rival. The absence at once of stumps in the corn-fields, 
and of untilled or unfenced land, gives the "buckeye State" a 
look of age that none of the " old Eastern States " can show. 
In corn, in meadow, in timber-land, Ohio stands alone. Her 
Indian corn exceeds in richness that of any other State ; she 
has ample stores of iron, and coal is worked upon the surface 
in every Alleghany valley. Wool, wine, hops, tobacco, all are 
raised ; her Catawba has inspired poems. Every river side is 
clothed with groves of oak, of hickory, of sugar-maple, of syca- 
more, of poplar, and of buckeye. Yet, as I said, the change to 
the Michigan prairie was full of a delightful relief; it was Hol- 
land after the Rhine, London after Paris. 

Where men grow tall there will maize grow tall, is a good 
sound rule : limestone makes both bone and straw. The 
North-western States, inhabited by giant men, are the chosen 
home of the most useful and beautiful of plants, the maize — in 
America called " corn." For hundreds of miles the railway 
track, protected not even by a fence or hedge, runs through the 
towering plants, which hide all prospect save that of their own 



Ill 



m 



58 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vii. 

green pyramids. Maize feeds the people, it feeds the cattle 
and the hogs that they export to feed the cities of the East ; 
from it is made yearly, as an Ohio farmer told me, " whisky 
enough to float the ark." Rice is not more the support of the 
Chinese than maize of the English in America. 

In the great corn-field of the North-western States dwells a 
people without a history, without tradition, busy at hewing out 
of the forest-trunks codes and social usages of its own. The 
Kansas men have set themselves to emancipating women ; the 
" Wolverines," as the people of Michigan are called, have 
turned their heads to education, and are teaching the teachers 
upon this point. 

I J' I The rapidity with which intellectual activity is awakened in 

the West is inexplicable to the people of New England. 
While you are admiring the laws of Minnesota and Wisconsin, 

|j(r Boston men tell you that the resemblance of the code of Kansas 

to that of Connecticut is consequent only on the fact, that the 

framers of the former possessed a copy of this one New England 

code, while they had never set eyes upon the code of any other 

. country in the world. While Yale and Harvard are trying in vain 

I'l' '' to keep pace with the State universities of Michigan and Kansas, 

you will meet in Lowell and New Haven men who apply an 
old Russian story to the Western colleges, and tell you that their 

;|j|j,| professors of languages, when asked where they have studied, 

reply that they guess they learned to read and write in Springfield. 
One of the difficulties of the New England colleges has been, 
to reconcile university traditions with democracy ; but in the 
Western States there is neither reconciliation nor tradition, 
though Universities are plenty. Probably the most democratic 
school in the whole world is the State University of Michigan, 
situate at Ann Arbor, near Detroit. It is cheap, large, prac- 

Ji'^f tical ; twelve hundred students, paying only the ten dollars' 

J' entrance fee, and five dollars a year during residence, and living 

where they can in the little town, attend the university to be 
prepared to enter with knowledge and resolution upon the 
affairs of their future life. A few only are educated by having 
their minds unfolded that they may become many-sided men j 

||' • but all work with spirit, and with that earnestness which is seen 

'^' ' in the Scotch universities at home. The war with crime, the 






M 



CHAP. VII.] UXIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 59 

war with sin, the war with death — Law, Theology, Medicine — 
these are the tliree foremost of man's employments ; to these, 
accordingly, the University affords her cliiefest care, and to one 
of these the student, his entrance examination passed, often 
gives his entire time. 

These things are democratic, but it is not in them that the 
essential democracy of the University is to be seen. There are 
at Michigan no honour-lists, no classes in our sense, no orders 
of merit, no competition. A man takes, or does not take, a 
certain degree. The University is governed, not by its mem- 
bers, not by its professors, but by a parliament of " regents " 
appointed by the inhabitants of the State. Such are the two 
great principles of the democratic University of the West. 

It might be supposed that these two strange departures 
from the systems of older universities were irregularities, in- 
troduced to meet the temporary embarrassments incidental to 
educational establishments in young States. So far is this 
from being the case, that, as I saw at Cambridge, the clearest- 
sighted men of the older colleges of America are trying to 
assimilate their teaching system to that of Michigan — at least, 
in the one point of the absence of competition. They assert 
that toil performed under the excitement of a fierce struggle 
between man and man is unhealthy work, different in nature 
and in results from the loving labour of men whose hearts are 
really in what they do : toil, in short, not very easily distin- 
guishable from slave-labour. 

In the matter of the absence of competition, Michigan is 
probably but returning to the system of the European universi- 
ties of the Middle Ages, but the government by other than the 
members of the University is a still stranger scheme. It is 
explained when we look to the source whence the funds of the 
University are drawn — namely, from the pockets of the tax- 
payers of the State. The men who have set up this corporation 
in their midst, and who tax themselves for its support, cannot 
be called on, they say, to renounce its government to their 
nominees. Professors from New England, unconnected with the 
State, men of one idea, often quarrelsome, sometimes " irreli- 
gious." There is much truth in these statements of the case, 
but it is to be hoped that the men chosen to serve as " regents " 



6o GREATER BRIT AW. [chap. vii. 

are of a higher intellectual stamp than those appointed to edu- 
cational offices in the Canadian backwoods. A report was put 
into my hands at Ottawa, in which a Superintendent of Instruc- 
tion writes to the Minister of Education, that he had advised 
the ratepayers of Victoria county not in future to elect as school 
trustees men who cannot read or write. As Michigan grows 
older, she will, perhaps, seek to conform to the practice of 
other universities in this matter of her government, but in the 
point of absence of competition she is likely to continue firm. 

Even here some difficulty is found in getting competent 
school directors; one of them reported 31 J children attending 
school. Of another district its superintendent writes : — 
"Conduct of scholars about the same as that of 'Young 
America' in general." Some of the superintendents aim at 
jocosity, and show no want of talent in themselves, while their 
efforts are to demonstrate its deficiency among the boys. The 
superintendent of Grattan says, in answer to some numbered 
questions : — " Condition good, improvement fair; for ^ of J of 
the year in school, and fifteen-sixteenths of the time at play. 
Male teachers most successful with the birch; female, with 
Cupid's darts. School-houses in fair whittling order. Appa- 
ratus : — Shovel, none ; tongs, ditto ; poker, one. Conduct of 
scholars like that of parents — good, bad, and indifferent. No 
minister in town — sorry ; no lawyer — good !" The superin- 
tendents of Manlius township report that Districts i and 2 
have buildings " fit (in winter) only for the polar bear, walrus, 
reindeer, Russian sable, or Siberian bat ;" and they go on to 
say, " Our children read everything, from Mr. Noodle's Essays 
on Matrimony to Artemus Ward's Lecture on First Principles 
of American Government." Another report from a very new 
county runs : — " Sunday-schools afford a little reading-matter 
to the children. Character of matter most read — battle, 
murder, and sudden death." A third states that the teachers 
are meanly paid, and goes on : — " If the teaching is no better 
than the pay, it must be like the soup that the rebels gave the 
prisoners." A superintendent, reporting that the success of 
the teachers is greater than their qualifications warrant, says : — 
" The reason is to be found in the Yankeeish adaptability of 
even Wolverines." 



CHAP. VII.] UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 6i 

After all, it is hard to pass jokes at the expense of the 
North-western people. A population who could maintain 
schools and universities under difficulties apparently over- 
whelming was the source from which to draw Union Volunteers 
such as those who, after the war, returned to their Northern 
homes, I have been told, shocked and astonished at the igno- 
rance and debasement of the Southern whites. 

The system of elective studies pursued at Michigan is one 
to which we are year by year tending in the English univer- 
sities. As sciences multiply and deepen, it becomes more and 
more inipossible that a " general course " scheme can produce 
men fit to take their places in the world. Camibridge has 
attempted to set up both systems, and, giving her students the 
choice, bids them pursue one branch of study with a view to 
honours, or take a less-valued degree requiring some slight 
proficiency in many things. Michigan denies that the stimulus 
of honour examinations should be connected with the elective 
system. With her, men first graduate in science, or in an arts 
degree, which bears a close resemblance to the English " poll," 
and then pursue their elected study in a course which leads to 
no university distinction, and which is free from the struggle 
for place and honours. The objections to "honours" rest 
upon a more solid foundation than a mere democratic hatred 
of inequality of man and man. Repute as a writer, as a 
practitioner, is valued by the Ann Arbor man, and the Wol- 
verines do not follow the Ephesians, and tell men who excel 
among them to go and excel elsewhere. The Michigan Pro- 
fessors say, and Dr. Hedges bears them out, that a far higher 
average of real knowledge is obtained under this system of 
independent work than is dreamt of in colleges where com- 
petition rules. "A higher average" is all they say, and they 
acknowledge frankly that there is here and there a student to 
be found to whom competition would do good. As a lule, 
they tell us, this is not the case. Unlimited battle between 
man and man for place is sufficiently the bane of the world not 
to be made the curse of schools. Competition breeds every 
evil which it is the aim of education, the duty of a university, 
to suppress : pale faces caused by excessive toil, feverish ex- 
citement that prevents true work, a hatred of the subject on 



62 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vu. 

which the toil is spent, jealousy of best friends, systematic 
depreciation of men's talents, rejection of all reading that will 
not " pay," extreme and unhealthy cultivation of the memory, 
general degradation of labour — all these evils, and many more, 
are charged upon the system. Everything that our Professors 
have to say of " cram " these American thinkers apply to com- 
petition. Strange doctrines these for Young America ! 

Of the practical turn which we should naturally expect to 
discover in the University of a brand-new State I found evidence 
in the regulation which prescribes that the degree of Master of 
Arts shall not be conferred as a matter of course upon graduates 
of three years' standing, but only upon such as have pursued 
professional or general scientific studies during that period. 
Even in these cases an examination before some one of the 
faculties is required for the Master's degree. I was told that 
for the Medical degree "four years of reputable practice" is 
received instead of certain courses. 

In her special and selected studies, Michigan is as merely 
practical as Swift's University of Brobdignag; but, standing 
far above the ordinary arts or science courses, there is a 
" University course " designed for those who have already taken 
the Bachelor's degree. It is harder to say what this course 
includes than what it does not. The twenty heads range over 
philology, philosophy, art, and science ; there is a branch of 
" criticism," one of " arts- of design," one of " fine arts." Astro- 
nomy, ethics, and Oriental languages are all embraced in a 
scheme brought into working order within ten years of the 
time when Michigan was a wilderness, and the college-yard an 
Indian hunting-ground. 

Michigan entered upon education-work very early in her 
history as a State. In 1850, her legislature commissioned the 
Hon. Ira Mayhew to prepare a work on education for circula- 
tion throughout America. Her progress has been as rapid as 
her start was good ; her natural history collection is already 
one of the best in America ; her medical school is almost un- 
equalled, and students flow to her even from New England 
and from California, while from New York she draws a hundred 
men a year. In only one point is Ann Arbor anywhere but in 
the van : she has hitherto followed the New England colleges 



CHAP. vii.J UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 63 

in excluding women from her degrees. The State University of 
Kansas has not shown the same exclusiveness that has charac- 
terised the conduct of the rulers of Michigan : women are ad- 
mitted not only to the classes, but to the professorships at 
Lawrence. 

This North-western institution at Ann Arbor was not behind 
even Harvard in the war : it supplied the Union army with 
1000 men. The 17th regiment of Michigan Volunteers, mainly 
composed of teachers and Ann Arbor students, has no cause to 
fear the rivalry of any other "record;" and such was the effect 
of the war, that in i860 there were in Michigan 2600 male to 
5350 female teachers, whereas now there are but 1300 men to 
7500 women. 

So proud are Michigan men of their roll of honour, that 
they publish it at full length in the calendar of the University. 
Every " class " from the foundation of the schools shows some 
graduates distinguished in their countiy's service during the 
suppression of the rebellion. The Hon. Oramel Hosford, 
Superintendent of Public Instruction in Michigan, reports that, 
owing to the presence of crowds of returned soldiers, the schools 
of the State are filled almost to the limit of their capacity, while 
some are compelled to close their doors against the thronging 
crowds. Captains, colonels, generals are among the students 
now humbly learning in the Ann Arbor University Schools. 

The State of Michigan is peculiar in the form that she has 
given . to her higher teaching ; but in no way peculiar in the 
attention she bestows on education. Teaching, high and low, 
is a passion in the West, and each of these young States has 
established a University of the highest order, and placed in 
every township not only schools, but public libraries, supported 
from the rates, and managed by the people. 

Not only have the appropriations for educational purposes 
by each State been large, but those of the Federal Government 
have been upon the most splendid scale. What has been done 
in the Eastern and the Central States no man can tell, but even 
west of the Mississippi twenty-two million acres have already 
been granted for such purposes, while fifty-six million more are 
set aside for similar gifts. 

The Americans are not forgetful of their Puritan traditions. 



64 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. viii. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Pacific Railroad, 

When the companions of the explorer Cartier found that the 
rapids at Montreal were not the end of all navigation, as they had 
feared, but that above them there began a second and bound- 
less reach of deep, still waters, they fancied they had found the 
long-looked-for route to China, and cried, " La Chine !" So the 
story goes, and the name has stuck to the place. 

Up to 1 86 1, the Canadians remained in the belief that they 
were at least the potential possessors of the only possible road 
for the China trade of the future, for in that year a Canadian 
government paper declared that the Rocky Mountains, south 
of British territory, were impassable for railroads. Maps showed 
that from St. Louis to San Francisco the distance was twice 
that from the head of navigation on Lake Superior to the British 
Pacific ports. 

America has gone through a five years' agony since that 
time ; but now, in the first days of peace, we find that the 
American Pacific Railroad, growing at the average rate of two 
miles a day at one end, and one mile a day at the other, will 
stretch from sea to sea in 1869 or 1870, while the British fine 
remains a dream. 

Not only are the mountains passable, but the engineers 
have found themselves compelled to decide on the conflicting 
claims of passes without number. Wall-like and frowning as 
the Rocky Mountains are when seen from the plains, the 
rolling gaps are many, and they are easier crossed by railway 
lines than the less lofty chains of Europe. From the heat of 
the country, the snow-line Hes high ; the. chosen pass is in the 
latitude of Constantinople or Oporto. The dryness of the 



CHAP. VIII.] THE PACIFIC RAILROAD. 65 

air of the centre of a vast continent prevents the fall of heavy 
snows or rains in winter. At eight or nine thousand feet above 
the sea, in the Black Hills, or Eastern Piedmont, the drivers on 
the Pacific line will have slighter snow-drifts to encounter than 
their brothers on the Grand Trunk or the Camden and Amboy 
at the sea-level. On the other hand, fuel and water are scarce, 
and there is an endless succession of smaller snowy chains 
which have to.be crossed, upon the Grand Plateau, or basin of 
the Great Salt Lake. Whatever the difficulties, in 1870 the 
line will be an accomplished fact 

In the Act creating the Pacific Railroad Company, passed 
in 1862, the company were bound to complete their line at the 
rate of a hundred miles a year. They are completing it at 
more than three times that rate. 
. When the Act is examined, it ceases to be strange that the 
road should be pushed with extraordinary energy and speed, 
so numerous are the baits offered to the companies to hasten 
its completion. Money is to be advanced them ; land is to be 
given them for every mile they finish — on a generous scale 
while the line is on the plains, on three times the scale when 
it reaches the more rugged tracts. These grants alone are 
estimated at twenty millions of acres. Besides the alternate 
sections, a width of 400 feet, with additional room for works 
and stations, is granted for the line. The Californian Com- 
pany is tempted by similar offers to a race with the Union 
Pacific, and each company is struggling to get the most land 
upon the basin. It is the interest of the Eastern Company 
that the junction should be as far as possible to the west ; of 
the Western, that it should be as far as possible to the east. 
The result is an average laying of three, and an occasional 
construction of four, miles a day. If we look to the progress 
at both ends, we find as much sometimes laid in a day as a 
bullock train could travel. So fast do the head-quarters " cities" 
keep moving forwards, that at the Californian end the super- 
intendent wished me to believe, that whenever his chickens 
heard a wagon pass, they threw themselves upon their backs, 
and held up their legs, that they might be tied, and thrown 
into the cart for a fresh move. " They are true birds-of- 
passage," he said. 

F 



66 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. viii. 

When the iron trains are at the front, the laying will for a 
short time go on at the rate of nine yards in every fifteen 
seconds ; but three or four hundred tons of rails have to be 
brought up every day upon the single track, and it is in this 
process that the time is lost. 

The advance carriages of the construction-train are well 
supplied with rifles hung from the roofs ; but even when the 
Indians forget their amaze, and attack the " city upon wheels," 
or tear up the track, they are incapable of destroying the line 
so fast as the machinery can lay it down. " Soon," as a 
Denver paper said, during my stay in the Mountain City, " the 
iron horse will sniff the Alpine breeze upon the summit of the 
Black Hills, 9000 feet above the sea /' and upon the plateau, 
where deer are scarce and buffalo unknown, the Indians have 
all but disappeared.* The worst Indian country is already 
crossed, and the red men have sullenly followed the buffalo to 
the South, and occupy the country between Kansas State and 
Denver, contenting themselves with preventing the construction 
of the Santa Fe and Denver routes to California. 

If the end to be kept in view in the construction of the first 
Pacific railroad line were merely the traffic from China and 
Japan to Europe, or the shortest route from San Francisco to 
Hampton Roads, the Kansas route through St. Louis, Denver, 
and the Berthoud Pass would be, perhaps, the best and shortest 
of those within the United States ; but the Saskatchewan line 
through British territory, with Halifax and Puget Sound for ports, 
would be still more advantageous. As it is, the true question 
seems to be, not the trade between the Pacific and Great Britain, 
but between Asia and America ; for Pennsylvania and Ohio must 
be the manufacturing countries of the next fifty years. 

Whatever out theory, the fact is plain enough : in 1870 we 
shall reach San Francisco from London in less time than by the 
severest travelling I could reach it from Denver in 1866. 

Wherever, in the States, North and South have met in con- 
flict, North has won. New York has beaten Norfolk ; Chicago, 
in spite of its inferior situation, has beaten the older St. Louis. 
In the same way, Omaha is carrying off the trade from Leaven- 

* On the 1st January, 1869, the line had reached the summit of the 
Wasatch RanG:e : — a thousand miles from the Missouri river. 



CHAP, vm.] THE PACIFIC RAILROAD. 67 

worth, Lawrence, and Kansas City. Ultimately Puget Sound 
may beat San Francisco in the race for the Pacific trade, and 
the Southern cities become still less able to keep their place 
than they have been hitherto. Time afcer time Chicago has 
thrown out intercepting lines, and diverted from St.- Louis trade 
which seemed of necessity to belong to her ; and the success of 
the Union Pacific line, and failure of the Kansas road, is a fresh 
proof of the superior energy of the Northern to the Southern 
city. This time a fresh element enters into the calculation, and 
declares for Chicago. The great circle route, the true straight 
line, is in these great distances shorter by fifty or a hundred 
miles than the straight lines of the maps and charts, and the 
Platte route becomes not only the natural, but the shortest 
route from sea to sea. 

Chicago has a great advantage over St. Louis in her com- 
parative freedom from the cholera, which yearly attacks the 
Missourian city. During my stay in St. Louis, the deaths from 
cholera alone were known to have reached 200 a day, in a 
population diminished by flight to 180,000. A quarantine was 
established on the river; the sale of fruit and vegetables pro- 
hibited ; prisoners released on condition that they should work 
at burying the dead ; and funeral corteges were forbidden. 
Chicago herself, unreached by the plague, was scattering hand- 
bills on every Western railroad line, warning immigrants against 
St. Louis. 

The Missourians have relied too much upon the Mississippi 
river, and have forgotten that railroads are superseding steam- 
boats every day. Chicago, on the other hand, which ten years 
ago was the twentieth city in America, is probably by this time 
the third. As a centre of thought, political and religious, she 
stands second only to Boston, and her Wabash and Michigan 
avenues are among the most beautiful of streets. 

• One of the chief causes of the future wealth of America is to 
be found in the fact that all her " inland " towns are ports. 
The State of Michigan lies between 500 and 900 miles from the 
ocean, but the single State has upon the great lakes a coast of 
1500 miles. From Fort Benton to the sea by water is nearly 
4000 miles, but the post is a much-used steamboat port, though 
more distant, even in the air-line, from the nearest sea upon the 

F 2 



68 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. viii. 

same side the dividing range, than is the White Sea from the 
Persian Gulf. Put it in which way you would, Europe could 
not hold, the Mississippi river. 

A great American city is almost invariably placed at a point 
where an important railroad finds an outport on a lake or river. 
This is no adaptation to railways of the Limerick saying about 
rivers, namely, that Providence has everywhere so placed them 
as to pass through the great towns j for in America railways 
precede population, and when mapped out and laid, they are 
but tramways in the desert. There is no great wonder in this 
when we remember that 158,000,000 acres of land have been 
up to this time granted to railroads in America. 

One tendency of a costly railroad system is that few lines 
will be made, and trade being thus driven into certain 
unchanging routes, a small number of cities will flourish 
greatly, and, by acting as housing stations or as ports, will rise 
to enormous wealth and population. Where a system of cheap 
railways is adopted, there will be year by year a tendency to 
multiply lines of traffic, and consequently to multiply also ports 
and seats of trade — a tendency, however, which may be more 
than neutralised by any special circumstances which may cause 
the lines of transit to converge rather than run parallel to one 
another. Of the system of costly grand trunk lines we have an 
instance in India, w^here we see the creation of Umritsur and 
the prosperity of Calcutta alike due to our single great Bengal 
line ; of the converging system we have excellent instances in 
Chicago and Bombay ; while we see the plan of parallel lines in 
action here in Kansas, causing the comparative equality of 
progress manifested in Leavenworth, in Atchison, in Omaha. 
The coasts of India swarmed with ports till our trunk lines 
ruined Goa and Surat to advance Bombay, and a hundred 
village ports to push our factory at Calcutta, founded by 
Charnock as late as 1690, but now grown to be the third or 
fourth city of the empire. 

Of the dozen chaotic cities which are struggling for the 
honour of becoming the future capital of the West, Leaven- 
worth, with 20,000 people, three daily papers, an opera house, 
and 200 drinking saloons, was, at the time of my visit in 1866, 
somewhat ahead of Omaha with its 12,000, two papers, and a 



CHAP. VIII.] THE PACIFIC RAILROAD. 69 

" one-horse " theatre, though the Northern city tied Leaven- 
worth in the point of " saloons." 

Omaha, Leavenworth, Kansas City, Wyandotte, Atchison, 
Topeka, Lecompton, and Lawrence, each praises itself, and 
runs down its neighbour. Leavenworth claims to be so healthy 
that when it lately became necessary to " inaugurate " the new 
graveyard, " they had to shoot a man on purpose " — a change 
since the days when the Southern Border Ruffians were in the 
habit of parading its streets, bearing the scalps of Abolitionists, 
stuck on poles. On the other hand, a Nebraska man, when 
asked whether the Kansas people were fairly honest, said : 
" Don't know 'bout honest ; but they do say as how the folk 
around take in their stone fences every night." Lawrence, the 
State capital, which is on the dried-up Kansas river, sneeringly 
says of all the new towns on the Missouri that the boats that 
ply between them are so dangerous that the fare is collected 
in instalments every five minutes throughout the trip. Next 
after the jealousy between two Australian colonies, there is 
nothing equal to the hatreds between cities competing for the 
same trade. Omaha has now the best chance of becoming the 
capital of the Far West, but Leavenworth will no doubt con- 
tinue to be the chief town of Kansas. 

The progress of the smaller cities is amazing. Pistol-shots 
by day and night are frequent, but trade and development are 
little interfered with by such incidents as these ; and as the 
village-cities are peopled up, the pioneers, shunning their 
fellows, keep pushing westwards, seeking new "locations." 
" You're the second man I've seen this fall ! Darn me, ef 'tain't 
'bout time to varmose out westerly — y," is the standing joke of 
the frontier-bars against each other. 

-X- ■5C- * * % * 

At St. Louis I had met my friend Mr. Hepworth Dixon, just 
out from England, and with him I visited the Kansas towns, and 
then pushed through Waumego to Manhattan, the terminus (for 
the day) of the Kansas Pacific line. Here we were thrust into 
what space remained between forty leathern mail-bags and the 
canvas roof of the mule-drawn ambulance, which was to be at 
once our prison for six nights, and our fort upon wheels against 
the Indians. 



70 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ix. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Omphalism. 

Dashing through a grove of cottonwood trees draped in big- 
nonia and ivy, we came out suddenly upon a charming scene : 
a range of huts and forts crowning a long low hill seamed with 
many a timber-clothed ravine, while the clear stream of the 
Republican fork wreathed itself about the woods and- bluffs. 
The block house, over which floated the Stars and Stripes, was 
Fort Riley, the Hyde Park Corner from which continents are 
to measure all their miles ; the " capital of the universe," or 
" centre of the world." Not that it has always been so. Geo- 
graphers will be glad to learn that not only does the earth 
gyrate, but that the centre of its crust also moves : within the 
last ten years it has removed westward into Kansas from Mis- 
souri — from Independence to Fort Riley. The contest for 
centreship is no new thing. Herodotus held that Greece was 
the very middle of the world, and that the unhappy Orientals 
were frozen, and the yet more unfortunate Atlantic Indians 
baked every afternoon of their poor lives in order that the sun 
might shine on Greece at noon ; London plumes herself on 
being the " centre of the terrestrial globe ; " Boston is the " hub 
of the hull universe," though the latter claim is less physical 
than moral, I believe. In Fort Riley, the Western men seem to 
have found the physical centre of the United States, but they 
claim for the Great Plains the intellectual as well as the poli- 
tical leadership of tire whole continent. These hitherto un- 
trodden tracks, they tell you, form the heart of the empire, 
from which the life-blood must be driven to the extremities. 
Geographical and political centres must ultimately coincide. 
Connected with this belief is another Western theory — that 



CHAP. IX.] MP HAL ISM. 71 

the powers of the future must be " Contmental." Germany, or 
else Russia, is to absorb all Asia and Europe, except Britain. 
North America is already cared for, as the gradual extinction of 
the Mexicans and absorption of the Canadians they consider 
certain. As for South America, the Califomians are planning 
an occupation of Western Brazil, on the ground that the con- 
tinental power of South America must start from the head 
waters of the great rivers, and spread seawards down the streams. 
Even in the Brazilian climate, they believe that the Anglo-Saxon 
is destined to become the dominant race. 

The success of this omphalism, this government from the 
centre, will be brought about, in the Western belief, by the 
necessity under which the nations on the head waters of all 
streams will find themselves of having the outlets in their hands. 
Even if it be true that railways are beating rivers, still the rail- 
ways must also lead seawards to the ports, and the need for 
their control is still felt by the producers in the centre countries 
of the continent. The Upper States must everywhere com- 
mand the Lower, and salt-water despotism find its end. 

The Americans of the Valley States, who fought all the more 
heartily in the Federal cause from the fact that they were 
battling for the freedom of the Mississippi against the men who 
held its mouth, look fonvard to the time when they will have 
to assert, peaceably but with firmness, their right to the freedom 
of their railways through the Northern Atlantic States. What- 
ever their respect for New England, it cannot be expected that 
they are for ever to permit Illinois and Ohio to be neutralised 
in the Senate by Rhode Island and Vermont. If it goes hard 
with New England, it will go still harder with New York ; and 
the Western men look forward to the day when Washington will 
be removed. Congress and all, to Columbus or Fort Riley. 

The singular wideness of Western thought, always verging on 
extravagance, is traceable to the width of Western land. The 
immensity of the continent produces a kind of intoxication ; 
there is moral dram-drinking in the contemplation of the map. 
No Fourth of July oration can come up to the plain facts con- 
tained in the Land Commissioner's report. The public domain 
of the United States still consists of one thousand five hundred 
millions of acres ; there are two hundred thousand square 



72 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ix. 

miles of coal-lands in the country — ten times as much as in all 
the remaining world. In the Western territories not yet States, 
there is land sufficient to bear, at the English population rate, 
five hundred and fifty millions of human beings. 

It is strange to see how the Western country dwarfs the 
Eastern States. Buffalo is called a " Western City; " yet from 
New York to Buffalo is only three hundred and fifty miles, and 
Buffalo is but seven hundred miles to the west of the most 
eastern point in all the United States. On the other hand, 
from Buffalo we can go two thousand five hundred miles west- 
wards without quitting the United States. " The West" is eight 
times as wide as the Atlantic States, and will soon be eight 
times as strong. 

The conformation of North America is widely different to 
that of any other continent on the globe. In Europe, the 
glaciers of the Alps occupy the centre point, and shed the 
waters towards each of the surrounding seas : confluence is 
almost unknown. So it is in Asia : there the Indus flowing 
into the Arabian Gulf, the Oxus into the Sea of Aral, the Gan- 
ges into the Bay of Bengal, the Yangtse Kiang into the Pacific, 
and the Yenesei into the Arctic Ocean, all take their rise in the 
central tableland. In South America, the mountains form a 
wall upon the west, whence the rivers flow eastwards in parallel 
lines. In North America alone are there mountains on each 
coast, and a trough between, into which the rivers flow together, 
giving in a single valley 23,000 miles of navigable stream to be 
ploughed by steamships. The map proclaims the essential 
unity of North America. Political geography might be a more 
interesting study than it has yet been made. 

In reaching Leavenworth, I had crossed two of the five 
divisions of America : the other three lie before me on my way 
to San Francisco. The eastern slopes of the Alleghanies, or 
Atlantic coast ; their western slopes ; the Great Plains ; the 
Grand Plateau, and the Pacific coast — these are the five divi- 
sions. Fort Riley, the centre of the United States, is upon 
the border of the third division, the Great Plains. The Atlantic 
coast is poor and stony, but the slight altitude of the Alleghany 
chain has prevented it being a hindrance to the passage of 
population to the West : the second of the divisions is now the 



CHAP. IX.] OMPHALISM. 73 

richest and most powerful of the five ; but the wave of immi- 
gration is crossing the Mississippi and Missouri into the Great 
Plains, and here at Fort Riley we are upon the limit of 
civilization. 

This spot is not only the centre of the United States and of 
the continent, but, if Denver had contrived to carry the Pacific 
railroad by the Berthoud Pass, would have been the centre 
station upon . what Governor Gilpin of Colorado calls the 
•'Asiatic and European railway line." As it is, Columbus in 
Nebraska has somewhat a better chance of becoming the 
Washington of the future than has this blockhouse. 

Quitting Fort Riley, we found ourselves at once upon the 
Plains. No more sycamore and white-oak and honey-locust; 
no more of the rich deep green of the cottonwood groves ; but 
yellow earth, yellow flowers, yellow grass, and- here and there 
groves of giant sunflowers with yellow blooms, but no more 
trees. 

As the sun set, we came on a body of cavalry marching 
slowly from the Plains towards the Fort. Before them, at some 
little distance, walked a sad-faced man on foot, in sober riding- 
dress, with a repeating carbine slung across his back. It was 
Sherman returning from his expedition to Santa Fe. 



74 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. x. 



CHAPTER X. 
Letter from Denver. 

Monday, -^rd September. 



My dear 



Here we are, scalps and all. 

On Tuesday last, at sundown, we left Fort Riley and supped 
at Junction City,* the extreme point that "civilization" has 
reached upon the Plains. Civihzation means whisky : post- 
offices don't count. 

It was here that it first dawned upon us that we were being 
charged 500 dollars to guard the United States' Califomian 
mail, with the compensation of the chance of being ourselves 
able to rob it with impunity. It is at all events the case that 
we, well armed as the mail-officers of Leavenworth insisted on 
our being, sat inside with forty-two cwt. of mail, in open bags, 
and over a great portion of the route had only the driver with 
us, without whose knowledge we could have read all and stolen 
most of the letters, and with whose knowledge, but against 
whose will, we could have carried off the whole, leaving him 
gagged, bound, and at the mercy of the Indians. As it was, a 
mail-bag fell out one day, without the knowledge of either Dixon 
or the driver, who were outside, and I had to shout pretty 
freely before they would pull up. 

On Wednesday we had our last "squar' meal" in the shape 
of a breakfast, at Fort Ellsworth, and soon were out upon the 
almost unknown Plains. In the morning we caught up and 
passed long wagon trains, each wagon drawn by eight oxen, and 
guarded by two drivers and one horseman, all armed with 

* Burnt by the Indians in 1868. 



CHAP. X.] LETTER FROM DENVER. 75 

breech-loading rifles and revolvers, or with the new " repeaters," 
before which breech-loaders and revolvers must alike go down. 
All day we kept a sharp look-out for a party of seven American 
officers, who, in defiance of the scout's advice, had gone out 
from the fort to hunt buffalo upon the track. About sundown 
we came into the little station of Lost Creek. The ranchmen 
told us that they had, during the day, been driven in from their 
work by a party of Cheyennes, and that they had some doubts 
as to the wisdom of the officers in going out to hunt. 

Just as we were leaving the station, one of the officers' horses 
dashed in riderless and was caught ; and about two miles from 
the station we passed another on its back, ripped up either by 
a knife or buffalo horn. The saddle was gone, but there were 
no other marks of a fight. We believe that these officers were 
routed by buffaloes, not Cheyennes, but still we should be glad 
to hear of them. 

The track is marked in many parts of the Plains by stakes, 
such as those from which the Llano Estacado takes its name ; 
but this evening we turned off into devious lines by way of 
precaution against ambuscades, coming round through the 
sandy beds of streams to the ranches for the change of mules. 
The ranchmen were always ready for us ; for while we were 
still a mile away, our driver would put his hand to his mouth 
and give a " How ! how ! how ! how — w !" the Cheyenne war- 
whoop. 

In the weird glare that follows sunset, we came upon some 
rocks, admirably fitted for an ambush. As we neared them, 
the driver said : " It's 'bout an even chance thet we's sculp 
ther' !" We could not avoid them, as there was a gully that 
could only be crossed at this one point. We dashed down into 
the " creek " and up again past the rocks : there were no 
Indians, but the driver was most uneasy till we reached Big 
Creek. 

Here they could give us nothing whatever to eat, the Indians 
having, on Tuesday, robbed them of everything they had, and 
ordered them to leave within fifteen days on pain of death. 

For 250 miles westwards from Big Creek, we found that every 
station had been warned (and most plundered) by bands of 
Cheyennes, on behalf of the forces of the Confederation 



76 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. x. 

encamped near the creek itself. The warning was in all cases 
that of lire and death at the end of fifteen days, of which nine 
days have expired. We found the horse-keepers of the Com- 
pany everywhere leaving their stations, and were, in conse- 
quence, very nearly starved, having been unsuccessful in our 
shots from the " coach," except, indeed, at the snakes. 

On Thursday we passed Big Timber, the only spot on the 
Plains where there are trees ; and there the Indians had 
counted the trunks, and solemnly warned the men against 
cutting more: "Fifty-two tree. You no cut more tree — 
no more cut. Grass ! You cut grass ; grass make big fire. 
You good boy — you clear out. Fifteen day, we come : you 
no gone — ugh !" The " ugh " accompanied by an expressive 
pantomime. 

On Thursday evening we got a meal of buffalo and prairie 
dog, the former too strong for my failing stomach, the latter 
wholesome nourishment, and fit for kings — as like our rabbit in 
flavour as he is in shape. This was at the horse-station of 
" The Monuments," a natural temple of awesome grandeur, 
rising from the plains like a giant Stonehenge. 

On Friday we "breakfasted" at Pond Creek Station, two 
miles from Fort Wallis. Here the people had applied for a 
guard, and had been answered : " Come into the fort ; we 
can't spare a man." So much for the value of the present 
forts ; and yet even these — Wallis and Ellsworth — are 200 miles 
apart.* 

We were joined at breakfast by Bill Comstock,f interpreter 
to the fort — a long-haired, wild-eyed half-breed — who gave us, 
in an hour's talk, the full history of the Indian politics that 
have led to the present war. 

The Indians, to the number of 20,000, have been in council 
with the Washington Commissioners all this summer at Fort 
Laramie ; and after being clothed, fed, and armed, lately con- 
cluded a treaty, allowing the running on the mail-roads. They 
now assert that this treaty was intended to apply to the Platte 
road (from Omaha and Atchison through Fort Kearney), and 

* On the lotli July, 1867, the Cheyennes attacked Fort Wallis. 
t Scalped by the Cheyennes at Pond Creek m 1868. 



CHAP. X.] LETTER FROM DENVER. 77 

to the Arkansas road, but not to the Smoky Hill road, which 
lies between the others, and runs through the buffalo country ; 
but their real opposition is to the railroad. The Cheyennes 
(pronounced Shians) have got the Comanches, Appaches, and 
Arapahoes from the south, and the Sioux and Kiowas from the 
north, to join them in a confederation under the leadership of 
Spotted Dog, the chief of the Little Dog Section of the Chey- 
ennes, and son of White Antelope — killed at Sand Creek 
battle by the Kansas and Colorada Volunteers — who has sworn 
to avenge his father. 

Soon after leaving Pond Creek, w^e sighted at a distance 
three mounted " braves," leading some horses ; and when we 
reached the next station, we found that they had been there, 
openly proclaiming that their mounts had been stolen from a 
team. 

All this day we sat with our revolvers laid upon the mail- 
bags in front of us, and our driver also had his armoury con- 
spicuously displayed, while we swept the Plains with many an 
anxious glance. We were on lofty rolling downs, and to the 
south the eye often ranged over much of the 130 miles which 
lay between us and Texas. To the north, the view was more 
bounded ; still, our chief danger lay near the boulders which 
here and there covered the Plains. 

All Thursday and Friday we never lost sight of the buifalo, 

in herds of about 300, and the " antelope " — the prong-horn, a 

kind of gazelle — in flocks of six or seven. Prairie dogs were 

abundant, and wolves and black-tail deer in view at every 

■ turn. 

The most singular of all the sights of the Plains is the 
constant presence of the skeletons of buffalo and of horse, of 
mule and of ox ; the former left by the hunters, who take but 
the skin, and the latter the losses of the mails and the wagon- 
trains through sunstroke and thirst. We killed a horse on the 
second day of our journey. 

When we came upon oxen that had not long been dead, we 
found that the intense dr}aiess of the air had made mummies 
of them : there was no stench, no putrefaction. 

During the day, I made some practice at antelope with the 
"driver's Ballard ; but an antelope at 500 yards is not an easy 



78 ' GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. x. 

target. The drivers shot repeatedly at buffalo at twenty yards, 
but this only to keep them away from the horses ; the revolver 
balls did not seem to go through their hair and skin, as they 
merely shambled on in their usual happy sort of way, after 
receiving a discharge or two. 

The prairie dogs sat barking in thousands on the tops of 
their mounds, but we were too grateful to them for their gaiety 
to dream of pistol-shots. They are no " dogs " at all, but 
rabbits that bark, with all the coney's tricks and turns, and the 
same odd way of rubbing their face with their paws while they 
con you from top to toe. 

With wolves, buffalo, antelope, deer, skunks, dogs, plover, 
curlew, dottrel, herons, vultures, ravens, snakes, and locusts, 
we never seemed to be without a million companions in our 
loneliness. 

From Cheyenne Wells, where we changed mules in the 
afternoon, we brought on the ranchman's wife, painfully making 
room for her at our own expense. Her husband had been 
warned by the Cheyennes that the place would be destroyed : 
he meant to stay, but was in fear for her. The Cheyennes had 
made her cook for them, and our supper had gone down Chey- 
enne throats. 

Soon after leaving the station, we encountered one of the 
great " dirt-storms " of the Plains. About five p.m. I saw a 
little white cloud growing into a column, which in half an hour 
turned black as night, and possessed itself of half the skies. 
We then saw what seemed to be a waterspout ; and though no 
rain reached us, I think it was one. When the storm burst on 
us, we took it for rain ; and, halting, drew down our canvas, 
and held it against the hurricane. We soon found that our 
eyes and mouths were full of dust ; and when I put out my 
hand, I felt that it w^as dirt, not rain, that was falling. In a 
few minutes it was pitch dark, and after the fall had continued 
for some time, there began a series of flashes of blinding 
lightning, in the very centre and midst of which we seemed to 
be. Notwithstanding this, there w^as no sound of thunder. 
The "norther" lasted some three or four hours ; and when it 
ceased, it left us total darkness, and a wind which froze our 
marrow as we again started on our way. When Frem^ont 



CHAP. X.] LETTER FROM DENVER. 79 

explored this route, he reported that the high ridge between 
the Platte and Arkansas was notorious among the Indians for 
its tremendous dirt-storms. Sheet lightning without thunder 
accompanies dust-storms in all great continents : it is as 
common in the Punjaub as in Australia, in South as in North 
America. 

On Saturday morning, at Lake station, we got beyond the 
Indians, and into a land of plenty, or at all events a land of 
something, for" we got milk from the station cow, and preserved 
fruits that had come round through Denver from Ohio and 
Kentucky. Not even on Saturday, however^ could we get 
dinner ; and as I missed the only antelope that came within 
reach, our supper was not much heavier than our breakfast. 

Rolling through the Arapahoe country, where it is proposed 
to make a reserve for the Cheyennes, at eight o'clock on 
Saturday morning we caught sight of the glittering snows of 
Pike's Peak, a hundred and fifty miles away, and all the day 
we were galloping towards it, through a country swarming with 
rattlesnakes and vultures. Late in the evening, when we were 
drawing near to the first of the Coloradan farms, we came on a 
white wolf unconcernedly taking his evening prowl about the 
stock-yards. He sneaked along without taking any notice of 
us, and continued his thief-like walk with a bravery that seemed 
only to show that he had never seen man before ; this might 
well be the case, if he came from the south, near the upper 
forks of the Arkansas. 

All this, and the frequency of buffalo, I was unprepared for. 
I imagined that though the Plains were uninhabited, the game 
had all been killed. On the contrary, the "Smoky district" 
was never known so thronged with buffalo as it is this year. 
The herds resort to it because there they are close to the water 
of the Platte river, and yet out of the reach of the traffic of 
the Platte road. The tracks they make in travelling to and 
fro across the Plains are visible for years after they have ceased 
to use them. I have seen them as broad and as straight as the 
finest of Roman roads. 

On Sunday, at two in the morning, we dashed into Denver ', 
and as we reeled and staggered from our late prison, the 
ambulance, into the " cockroach corral " which does duty for 



8o GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. x. 

the bar-room of the " Planters' House," we managed to find 
strength and words to agree that we would fix no time for 
meeting the next day. We expected to sleep for thirty hours ; 
as it was, we met at breakfast at seven a.m., less than five 
hours from the time we parted. It is to-day that we feel 
exhausted ; the exhilaration of the mountain air, and the 
excitement of frequent visits, carried us through yesterday. 
Dixon is suffering from strange blains and boils, caused by the 
unwholesome food. 

We have been called upon here by Governor Gilpin and 
Governor Cummings, the opposition governors. The former is 
the elected governor of the State of Colorado which is to be, 
and would have been but for the fact that the President put 
his big toe (Western for veto) upon the bill ; the latter, the 
Washington-sent governor of the Territory. Gilpin is a typical 
pioneer man, and the descendant of a line of such. He comes 
of one of the original Quaker stocks of Maryland, and he and 
his ancestors have ever been engaged in founding States. He 
himself, after taking an active share in the foundation of 
Kansas, commanded a regiment of cavalry in the Mexican war. 
After this, he was at the head of the pioneer army which 
explored the paixs of the Cordilleras and the Territory of 
Nevada. He it was who hit upon the glorious idea of placing 
Colorado half upon each side of the Sierra Madre. There never 
in the history of the world was a grander idea than this. Any 
ordinary pioneer or politician would have given Colorado the 
" natural " frontier, and have tried for the glory of the founda- 
tion of two States instead of one. The consequence would 
have been lasting disunion between the Pacific and Atlantic 
States, and a possible future break-up of the country. As it is, 
this commonwealth, little as it at present is, links sea to sea, 
and Liverpool to Hong Kong. 

The city swarms with Indians of the bands commanded by 
the chiefs Nevara and Colloreyo. They are at war with the 
six confederate tribes, and with the Pawnees — with all the 
Plain Indians, in short. Now, as the Pawnees are also at war 
with the six tribes, there is a pretty triangular fight. They 
came in to buy arms, and fearful scoundrels they look. Short, 
flat-nosed, long-haired, painted in red and blue, and dressed 



CHAP. X.] LETTER FROM DENVER. 8i 

in a gaudy costume, half Spanish, half Indian, which makes 
their filthiness appear more filthy by contrast, and themselves 
carrying only their Ballard and Smith-and-Wesson, but forcing 
the squaws to carry all their other goods, and papooses in 
addition, they present a spectacle of unmixed ruffianism which I 
never expect to see surpassed. Dixon and I, both of us, left' 
London with " Lo ! the poor Indian," in all his dignity and 
hook-nosedness, elevated on a pedestal of nobihty in our 
hearts. Our views were shaken in the East, but nothing revolu- 
tionised them so rapidly as our three days' risk of scalping in 
the Plains. John Howard and Mrs. Beecher Stowe themselves 
would go in for the Western " disarm at any prite, and exter- 
minate if necessary " policy if they lived long in Denver. One 
of the braves of Nevara's command brought in the scalp of a 
Cheyenne chief taken by him last month, and to-day it hangs 
outside the door of a pawnbroker's shop, for sale, fingered by 
every passer-by. 

Many of the band were engaged in putting on their paint, 
which was bright vermilion, with a little indigo round the eye. 
This, with the sort of pigtail which they wear, gives them the 
look of the gnomes in the introduction to a London pantomime. 
One of them — Nevara himself, I was told — wore a sombrero 
with three scarlet plumes, taken probably from a Mexican, a 
crimson jacket, a dark-blue shawl, worn round the loins and 
over the arm in Spanish dancer fashion, and embroidered 
mocassins. His squaw was a vermilion-faced bundle of rags, 
not more than four feet high, staggering under buffalo hides, 
bow and arrows, and papoose. They move everywhere on 
horseback, and in the evening withdraw in military order, with 
advance and rear guard, to a camp at some distance from the 
town. 

I inclose some prairie flowers, gathered in my walks round 
the city. Their names are not suited to their beauty ; the large 
white one is " the morning blower," the most lovely of all, save 
one, of the flowers of the Plains. It grows with many branches 
to a height of some eighteen inches, and bears from thirty to 
fifty blooms. The blossoms are open up to a little after sunrise, 
when they close, seldom to open even after sunset. It is, 
therefore, peculiarly the early riser's flower j and if it be true 

G 



82 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. x. 

that Nature doesn't make things in vain, it follows that Nature 
intended men — or, at all events, some men — to get up early, 
which is a point that I believe was doubtful hitherto. 

For the one prairie flower which I think more beautiful than 
the blower, I cannot find a name. It rises to about six inches 
above ground, and spreads in a circle of a foot across. Its leaf 
is thin and spare; its flower-bloom a white cup, about two 
inches in diameter ; and its buds pink and pendulent. 

All our garden annuals are to be found in masses acres in 
size upon the Plains. Penstemon, coreopsis, persecaria, yucca, 
dwarf schumach, marigold, and sunflower, all are flowering here 
at once, till the country is ablaze with gold and red. The 
coreopsis of our gardens they call the " rosin-weed," and say 
that it forms excellent food for sheep. 

The view of the " Cordillera della Sierra Madre," the Rocky 
Mountain main chain, from the outskirts of Denver is sublime ; 
that from the roof at Milan does not approach it. Twelve 
miles from the city the mountains rise abruptly from the Plains. 
Piled range above range with step-like regularity, they are 
topped by a long white line, sharply relieved against the indigo 
of the sky. Two hundred and fifty miles of the mother Sierra 
are in sight from our verandah ; to the south, Pike's Peak and 
Spanish Peak ; Long's Peak to the north ; Mount Lincoln 
towering above all. The views are limited only by the curva- 
ture of the earth, such is the marvellous purity of the Coloradan 
air, the effect at once of the distance from the sea and of the 
bed of limestone which underlies the Plains. 

The site of Denver is heaven-blessed in climate as well as 
loveliness. The sky is brilliantly blue, and cloudless from dawn 
till noon. In the mid-day heats, cloud-making in the Sierra 
begins, and by sunset the sno^^y chain is multiplied a hundred 
times in curves of white and purple cumuli, while thunder rolls 
heavily along the range. " This is a great country, sir," said a 
Coloradan to me to-day. "We make clouds for the whole 
universe." At dark there is dust or thunder-storm at the moun- 
tain foot, and then the cold and brifliant night. Summer and 
winter, it is the same. 



83 



CHAPTER XL 

Red India. 

" These Red Indians are not red," was our first cry when we 
saw the Utes in the streets of Denver. They had come into 
town to be painted as. English ladies go to London to shop; 
and we saw them engaged within a short time after their arrival 
in daubing their cheeks with vermilion and blue, and referring 
to glasses which the squaws admiringly held. Still, when we 
met them with peaceful paintless cheeks, we had seen that their 
colour was brown, copper, dirt, anything you please except red. 

The Hurons, with whom I had stayed at Lorette, were 
French in training if not in blood ; the Pottawatomies of St. 
Mary's Mission, the Delawares of Leavenworth, are tame 
Indians. It is true that they are not red, but I had expected 
to have found these wild prairie and mountain Indians of the 
colour from which they take their name. Save for paint, I 
found them of a colour wholly ditlerent from that which we 
call red. 

Low in stature, yellow-skinned, small-eyed, and Tartar-faced, 
the Indians of the Plains are a distinct people from the tall, 
hook-nosed warriors of the Eastern States. It is impossible to 
set eyes on their women without being reminded of the dwarf 
skeletons found in the mounds of Missouri and Iowa ; but, men 
or women, the Utes bear no resemblance to the bright-eyed, 
graceful people with whom Penn traded and Standish fought. 
They are not less inferior in mind than in body. It was no 
Shoshone, no Ute, no Cheyenne who called the rainbow the 
" heaven of flowers," the moon the " night queen," or the stars 
^' God's eyes." The Plain tribes are as deficient, too, in heroes 
as in poetry : they have never even produced a general, and 
White Antelope is their nearest approach to a Tecumseh. 
Their mode of life, the natural features of the country in which 

G 2 



84 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xi. 

they dwell, have nothing in them to suggest a reason for their 
debased condition. The reason must lie in the blood, the race. 
All who have seen both the Indians and the Polynesians at 
home must have been struck with innumerable resemblances. 
The Maori and Red Indian wakes for the dead are identical : 
the Californian Indians wear the Maori mat ; the " medicine " 
of the Mandan is but the "tapu" of Polynesia; the New 
Zealand dance-song, the Maori tribal sceptre, were found alike 
by Strachey in Virginia and Drake in California : the canoes of 
the West Indies are the same as those of Polynesia. Hundreds 
of arguments, best touched from the farther side of the Pacific, 
concur to prove the Indians a Polynesian race. The canoes 
that brought to Easter Island the people who built their mounds 
and rock temples there, may as easily have been carried on by 
the Chilian breeze and current to the South American shore. 
The wave from Malaya would have spent itself upon the 
northern plains. The Utes would seem to be Kamskatkians, 
or men of the Amoor, who, fighting their way round by Behring 
Straits, and then down south, drove a wedge between the Poly- 
nesians of Appalachia and California. No theory but this will 
account for the sharp contrast between the civilization of ancient 
Peru and Mexico, and the degradation in which the Utes 
have lived from the earliest recorded times. Mounds, rock 
temples, worship, all are alike unknown to the Indians of the 
Plains j to the Polynesian Indians, these were things that had 
come down to them from all time. 

Curious as is the question of the descent of the American 
tribes, it has no bearing on the future of the country — unless, 
indeed, in the eyes of those who assert that Delawares and 
Utes, Hurons and Pawnees, are all one race, with features 
modified by soil and climate. If this were so, the handsome, 
rollicking, frank-faced Coloradan " boys " would have to look 
forward to the time when their sons' sons should be as like the 
Utes as many New Englanders of to-day are like the Indians 
they expelled — that, as the New Englanders are tall, taciturn, 
and hatchet-faced, the Coloradans of the next age should be 
flat-faced warriors, five feet high. Confidence in the future of 
America must be founded on a belief in the indestructible 
vitality of race. 



CHAP. XI.] RED INDIA. 85 

Kamskatkians or Polynesians, Malays or sons of the prairies 
on which they d^Ye^, the Red Indians have no future. In 
twenty years there will scarcely be one of pure blood alive 
within the United States. 

In La Plata, the Indians from the inland forests gradually 
mingle with the whiter inhabitants of the coast, and become 
indistinguishable from the remainder of the population. In 
Canada and Tahiti, the French intermingle with the native 
race : the Hurons are French in everything but name. In 
Kansas, in Colorado, in New Mexico, miscegenation will never 
be brought about. The pride of race, strong in the English 
everywhere, in America and Australia is an absolute bar to 
intermarriage, and even to lasting connexions with the 
aborigines. What has happened in Tasmania and Victoria is 
happening in New Zealand and on the Plains. When you ask 
a Western man his views on the Indian question, he says : — 
"Well, sir, we can destroy them by the laws of war, or thin 'em 
out by whisky ; but the thinning process is plaguy slow." 

There are a good many Southerners out upon the Plains. 
One of them, describing to me how in Florida they had hunted 
down the Seminoles with bloodhounds, added, " And sarved the 
pesky sarpints right, sah ! " South-western volunteers, cam- 
paigning against the Indians, have been known to hang up in 
their tents the scalps of the slain, as we English used to nail up 
the skins of the Danes. 

There is in these matters less hypocrisy among the Americans 
than with ourselves. In 1840, the British Government assumed 
the sovereignty of New Zealand in a proclamation which set 
forth with great precision that it did so for the sole purpose of 
protecting the aborigines in the possession of their lands. The 
Maories numbered 200,000 then : they number 20,000 now. 

Among the Western men there is no difference of opinion on 
the Indian question. Rifle and revolver are their only policy. 
The New Englanders, who are all for Christianity and kindliness 
in their dealings with the red men, are not similarly united in 
one cry. Those who are ignorant of the nature of the Indian, 
call out for agricultural employment for the braves j those who 
know nothing of the Indian's life demand that " reserves " be 
set aside for him, forgetting that no " reserve" can be large 



86 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xi. 

enough to hold the buffalo, and that without the buffalo the 
red men must plough or starve. 

Indian civilization through the means of agriculture is all but 
a total failure. The Shawnees are thriving near Kansas City, 
the Pottawatomies living at St. Mary's Mission, the Delawares 
existing at Leavenworth ; but in all these cases there is a large 
infusion of white blood. The Canadian Hurons are completely 
civilized j but then they are completely French. If you succeed 
v/ith an Indian to all appearance, he will suddenly return to his 
untamed state. An Indian girl, one of the most orderly of the 
pupils at a ladies' school, has been known, on feeling herself 
aggrieved, to withdraw to her room, let down her back hair, 
paint her face, and howl. The same tendency showed itself in 
the case of the Delaware chief who built himself a white man's 
house, and lived in it thirty years, but then suddenly set up his 
old wigwam in the dining-room in disgust. Another bad case 
is that of the Pawnee who visited Buchanan, and behaved so 
well that when a young Englishman, who came out soon after, 
told the President he was going West, he gave him a letter to 
the chief, then with his tribe in Northern Kansas. The Pawnee 
read the note, offered a pipe, gravely protested eternal friendship, 
slept upon it, and next morning scalped his visitor with his own 
hand. 

The English everywhere attempt to introduce civilization, or 
to modify that which exists, in a rough-and-ready manner which 
invariably ends in failure or in the destruction of the native 
race. A hundred years of absolute rule, mostly peaceable, have 
not, under every advantage, seen the success of our repeated 
attempts to establish trial by jury in Bengal. For twenty years 
the Maories have mixed with the New Zealand colonists on 
nearly equal terms, have almost universally professed them- 
selves Christians, have attended English schools, and learnt to 
speak the English language, and to read and write their own ; 
in spite of all this, a few weeks of fanatic outburst were enough 
to reduce almost the whole race to a condition of degraded 
savagery. The Indians of America have within the last few 
years been caught and caged, given acres where they once had 
leagues, and told to plough where once they hunted. A 
pastoral race, with no conception of property in land, they have 



GHAP. XL] RED INDIA. 87 

been manufactured into freeholders and tenant farmers ; 
Western Ishmaelites, sprung of a race which has wandered 
since its legendary life begins, they have been subjected to 
homestead laws and title registration. If our experiments in 
New Zealand, in India, and on the African coast have failed, 
cautious and costly as they were, there can be no great wonder 
in the unsuccess that has attended the hurried American experi- 
ments. It is not for us, who have the past of Tasmania and the 
present of Queensland to account for, to do more than record 
the fact that the Americans are not more successful with the red 
men of Kansas than we with the black men of Australia. 

The Bosjesman is not a more unpromising subject for civili- 
zation than the red man ; the Ute is not even gifted with the 
birthright of most savages, the mimetic power. The black man 
in his dress, his farming, his religion, his family life, is always 
trying to imitate the white. In the Indian there is none of 
this : his ancestors roamed over the Plains — he will roam ; his 
ancestors hunted — why should not he hunt ? The American 
savage, like his Asiatic cousins, is conservative ; the African 
changeable, and strong in imitative faculties of the mind. Just 
as the Indian is less versatile than the negro, so, if it were 
possible gradually to change his mode of hfe, and slowly to 
bring him to the agricultural state, he would probably become 
a skilful and laborious cultivator, and worthy inhabitant of the 
western soil ; as it is, he is exterminated before he has time to 
learn. '^ Sculp 'em fust, and then talk to 'em," the Coloradans say. 

Peace Commissioners are yearly sent from Washington to 
treat with hostile tribes upon the Plains. The Indians invari- 
ably continue to fight and rob till winter is at hand ; but when 
the snows appear, they send in runners to announce that they 
are prepared to make submission. The Commissioners appoint 
a place, and the tribe, their relatives, alhes, and friends come 
down thousands strong, and enter upon debates which are pur- 
posely prolonged till spring. All this time the Indians are kept 
in food and drink; whisky, even, is illegally provided them, 
with the cognizance of the authorities, under the name of 
" hatchets." Blankets and, it is said, powder and revolvers, 
are supplied to them as necessary to their existence on the 
Plains ; but when the first of the spring flowers begin to peep 



88 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, si, 

up through the snow drifts on the prairies, they take their leave, 
and in a few weeks are out again upon the war-path, plundering 
and scalping all the whites. 

Judging from English experience in the north, and Spanish 
in Mexico and South America, it would seem as though the 
white man and the red cannot exist on the same soil. Step by 
step the English have driven back the braves, till New Englanders 
now remember that there were Indians once in Massachusetts, 
as we remember that once there were bears in Hampshire. 
King Philip's defeat by the Connecticut Volunteers seems to 
form part of the early legendary history of our race; yet 
there is still standing, and in good repair, in Dorchester, a 
suburb of Boston, a frame-house, which in its time has been 
successfully defended against Red Indians. On the other hand, 
step by step since the days of Cortez, the Indians and half- 
bloods have driven out the Spaniards from Mexico and South 
America. White men, Spaniards, received Maximilian at Vera 
Cruz, but he was shot by full-blood Indians at Queretaro. 

If any attempt is to be made to save the Indians that remain, 
it must be worked out in the Eastern States. Hitherto the 
whites have but pushed back the Indians westward : if they 
would rescue the remnant from starvation, they must bring 
them East, away from Western men, and Western hunting 
grounds, and let them intermingle with the whites, living, farm- 
ing along with them, intermarrying if possible. The hunting 
Indian is too costly a being for our age ; but we are bound to 
remember that ours is the blame of having failed to teach him 
to be something better. 

After all, if the Indian is mentally, morally, and physically 
inferior to the white man, it is in every way for tihe advantage 
of the world that the next generation that inhabits Colorado 
should consist of whites instead of reds. That this result should 
not be brought about by cruelty or fraud upon the now-existing 
Indians, is all that we need require. The gradual extinction of 
the inferior races is not only a law of nature, but a blessing to 

mankind. 

The Indian question is not likely to be one much longer : 
before I reached England again, I learnt that the Coloradan 
capital had offered " twenty dollars apiece for Indian scalps with 
ears on." 



89 



CHAPTER XII. 

Colorado. 

When you have once set eyes upon the never-ending sweep of 
the Great Plains, you no longer wonder that America rejects 
Malthusianism. As Strachey says of Virginia, "Here is ground 
enough to satisfy the most covetous and wide affection." The 
freedom of these grand countries was worth the tremendous con- 
flict in which it was, in reality, the foremost question ; their 
future is of enormous moment to America. 

Travellers soon learn, when making estimates of a country's 
value, to despise no feature of the landscape ; that of the Plains 
is full of life, full of charm — lonely, indeed, but never wearisome. 
Now great roaring uplands of enormous sweep, now boundless 
grassy plains ; there is all the grandeur of monotony, and yet 
continual change. Sometimes the distances are broken by blue 
buttes or rugged bluffs. Over all there is a sparkling atmo- 
sphere and never-failing breeze ; the air is bracing even when 
most hot ; the sky is cloudless, and no rain falls. A solitude 
which no words can paint, and the boundless prairie swell, 
convey an idea of vastness which is the overpowering feature 
of the Plains. 

Maps do not remove the impression produced by views. 
The Arkansas river, which is born and dies within the limit of 
the Plains, is two thousand miles in length, and is navigable for 
eight hundred miles. The Platte and Yellowstone are each of 
them as long. Into the Plains and Plateau you could put all 
India twice. The impression is not merely one of size. There 
is perfect beauty, wondrous fertility, in the lonely steppe ; no 
patriotism, no love of home, can prevent the traveller wishing 
here to end his days. 



90 GEEATER BRITAIN. [chap. xii. 

To those who love the sea, there is a double charm. Not 
only is the roll of the prairie as grand as that of the Atlantic, 
but the crispness of the wind, the absence of trees, the multi- 
tude of tiny blooms upon the sod, all conspire to give a feeling 
of nearness to the ocean, the effect of which is that we are 
always expecting to hail it from off the top of the next hillock. 

The resemblance to the Tartar Plains has been remarked by 
Coloradan writers ; it may be traced much further than they 
have carried it. Not only are the earth, air, and water much 
alike, but in Colorado, as in Bokhara, there are oil-wells and 
mud volcanoes. The colour of the landscape is, in summer, 
green and flowers ; in fall-time, yellow and flowers, but flowers 
ever. 

The eastern and western portions of the Plains are not alike. 
In Kansas the grass is tall and rank ; the ravines are filled with 
Cottonwood, hickory, and black walnut ; here and there are 
square miles of sunflowers, from seven to nine feet high. As we 
came west, we found that the sunflowers dwindled, and at Denver 
they are from three to nine inches in height, the oddest little 
plants in nature, but thorough sunflowers for all their smallness. 
We found the buffalo in the eastern plains in the long bunch- 
grass, but in the winter they work to the west in search of the 
sweet and juicy "blue grass," which they rub out from under 
the snow in the Coloradan plains. This grass is crisp as hair, 
and so short that, as the story goes, you must lather before you 
mow it. The " blue grass " has high vitality : if a wagon train 
is camped for a single night among the sunflowers or tall weeds, 
this crisp turf at once springs up, and holds the ground for ever. 

The most astounding feature of these plains is their capacity 
to receive millions, and, swallowing them up, to wait open- 
mouthed for more. Vast and silent, fertile yet waste, field-like 
yet untilled, they have room for the Huns, the Goths, the 
Vandals, for all the teeming multitudes, that have poured and 
can pour from the plains of Asia and of Central Europe. 
Twice as large as Hindostan, more temperate, more habitable, 
nature has placed them here hedgeless, gateless, free to all — a 
green field for the support of half the human race, unclaimed, 
untouched, awaiting, smiHng, hands and plough. 

There are two curses upon this land. Here, as in India, the 



CHAP. XII.] COLORADO. 91 

rivers depend on the melting of distant snows for their sup- 
phes, and in the hot weather are represented by beds of 
parched white sand. So hot and dry is a great portion of the 
land, that crops require irrigation. Water for drinking purposes 
is scarce ; artesian bores succeed, but they are somewhat costly 
for the Coloradan purse, and the supply from common wells is 
brackish. This, perhaps, may be in part accounted for by the 
Western mode of "prospecting" after water, under which it is 
agreed that if none be found at ten feet, a trial shall be made 
at a fresh spot. The thriftless ranchman would sooner find bad 
water at nine feet than good at eleven. 

Irrigation by means of dams and reservoirs, sueh as those we 
are building in Victoria, is but a question of cost and time. 
The never-failing breezes of the Plains may be utilized for 
water-raising, and with water all is possible. Even in the 
mountain plateau, overspread as it is with soda, it has been 
found, as by French farmers in Algeria, that, under irrigation, 
the more alkali the better corn-crop. 

When fires are held in check by special enactments, such as 
those which have been passed in Victoria and South Australia, 
and the waters of the winter streams retained for summer use 
by tanks and dams ; when artesian wells are frequent and irri- 
gation general, belts of timber will become possible upon the ■ 
Plains. Once planted, these will in their turn mitigate the 
extremes of climate, and keep alike in check the forces of 
evaporation, sun, and wind. Cultivation itself brings rain, and 
steam will soon be available for pumping water out of wells, for 
there is a great natural store of brown coal and of oil-bearing 
shale near Denver, so that the future would be bright were it 
not for the locusts — the scourge of the Plains — the second 
curse. The coming of the chirping hordes is a real calamity 
in these far-western countries. Their departure, whenever it 
occurs, is officially announced by the governor of the State. 

I have seen a field of Indian corn stripped bare of every leaf 
and cob by the " crickets ; " but the owner told me that he found 
consolation in the fact that they ate up the weeds as well. For 
the locusts there is no cure. The plovers may eat a few billions, 
but, as a rule, Coloradans must learn to expect that the locusts 
will increase with the increase of the crops on which they feed. 



92 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xi. 

The more corn, the more locusts — the more plovers, perhaps ; 
a clear gain to the locusts and plovers, but a dead loss to the 
farmers and ranchmen. 

The Coloradan "boys" are a handsome, intelligent race. 
The mixture of Celtic and Saxon blood has here produced a 
generous and noble manhood ; and the absence of forest, and 
consequent exposure to wind and sun, has exterminated ague, 
and driven away the hatchet-face ; but for all this, the Coloradans 
may have to succumb to the locusts. At present they affect to 
despise them. "How may you get on in Colorado?" said a 
Missourian one day to a "boy" that was up at St. Louis. 
" Purty well, guess, if it warn't for the insects." " What insects ? 
Crickets ?" " Crickets ! Wall, guess not — ^jess insects like : 
rattlesnakes, panther, bar, catamount, and sich like." 

" The march of empire stopped by a grasshopper " would be 
a good heading for a Denver paper, but would not represent a 
fact. The locusts may alter the step, but not cause a halt. If 
corn is impossible, cattle are not ; already thousands are pas- 
tured round Denver on the natural grass. For horses, for 
merino sheep, these rolling table-lands are pecuHarly adapted. 
The New Zealand paddock system may be applied to the whole 
of this vast region — Dutch clover, French lucern, could replace 
the Indian grasses, and four sheep to the acre would seem no 
extravagant estimate of the carrying capability of the lands. 
The world must come here for its tallow, its wool, its hides, its 
food. 

In this seemingly happy conclusion there lurks a danger. 
Flocks and herds are the main props .of great farming, the 
natural supporters of an aristocracy. Cattle breeding is incon- 
sistent, if not with republicanism, at least with pure democracy. 
There are dangerous classes of two kinds — those who have too 
many acres, as well as those who have too few. The danger at 
least is real. Nothing short of violence or special legislation 
can prevent the Plains from continuing to be for ever that 
which under nature's farming they have ever been — the feeding 
ground for mighty flocks, the cattle pasture of the world. 



93 



CHAPTER XIII, 

Rocky Mountains, 

" What will I do for you if you stop here among us ? Why, 
I'll name that peak after you in the next survey," said Governor 
Gilpin, pointing to a snowy mountain towering to its 15,000 
feet in the direction of Mount Lincoln. I was not to be 
tempted, however ; and as for Dixon, there is already a county 
named after him in Nebraska : so off we went along the foot of 
the hills on our road to the Great Salt Lake, following the 
" Cherokee Trail." 

Striking north from Denver by Vasquez Fork and Cache la 
Poudre — called " Cash le Powder," just as Mont Royal has be- 
come Montreal, and Sault de Ste. Marie, Soo— we entered the 
Black Mountains, or Eastern foot-hills, at Beaver Creek. On 
the second day, at two in the afternoon, we reached Virginia 
Dale for breakfast, without adventure, unless it were the shooting 
of a monster rattlesnake that lay " coiled in our path upon the 
mountain side." Had we been but a few minutes later, we 
should have made it a halt for " supper " instead of breakfast, 
as the drivers had but these two names for our daily meals, at 
whatever hour they took place. Our " breakfasts " varied from 
3.30 A.M. to 2 P.M. ; our suppers from 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. 

Here we found the weird red rocks that give to the river and 
the territory their name of Colorado, and came upon the moun- 
tain plateau at the spot where last year the Utes scalped seven 
men only three hours after Speaker Colfax and a Congressional 
party had passed with their escort. 

While trundling over the sandy wastes of Laramie Plains, we 
sighted the Wind river chain drawn by Bierstadt in his great 
picture of the " Rocky Mountains." The painter has caught 



94 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiii. 

the forms, but missed the atmosphere of the range : the clouds 
and mists are those of Maine and Massachusetts ; there is 
colour more vivid, darkness more lurid, in the storms of 
Colorado. 

This was our first sight of the main range since we entered 
the Black Hills, although we passed through the gorges at the 
very foot of Long's Peak. It was not till we had reached the 
rolling hills of Medecine Bow — a hundred miles beyond the 
peak — that we once more caught sight of it shining in the rear. 

In the night between the second and third days, the frost 
was so bitter, at the great altitude to which we had attained, 
that we resorted to every expedient to keep out the cold. 
While I was trying to peg down one of the leathern flaps of our 
ambulance with the pencil from my note-book, my eye caught 
the moonlight on the ground, and I drew back saying " We are 
on the snow." The next time we halted, I found that what I 
had seen was an impalpable white dust, the much dreaded 
alkali. 

In the morning of the third day we found ourselves in a 
country of dazzling white, dotted with here and there a tuft of 
sage-brush — an Artemisia akin to that of the Algerian highlands. 
At last we were in the "American desert" — the '''' Maitvaises 
terresT 

Once only did we escape for a time from alkali and sage to 
sweet waters and sweet grass. Near Bridger's Pass and the 
" divide " between Atlantic and Pacific floods, we came on a 
long valley swept by chilly breezes, and almost unfit for human 
habitation from the rarefaction of the air, but blessed with 
pasture ground on which domesticated herds of Himalayan 
yak should one day feed. Settlers in Utah will find out that 
this animal, which would flourish here at altitudes of from 4000 
to 14,000 feet, and which bears the most useful of all furs, re- 
quires less herbage in proportion to its weight and size than 
almost any animal we know. 

This Bridger's Pass route is that by which the telegraph line 
runs, and I was told by the drivers strange stories of the Indians 
and their views on this great Medecine. They never destroy 
out of mere wantonness, but have been known to cut the wire 
and then lie in ambush in the neighbourhood, in the expectation 



CHAP, xm.] ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 95 

that repairing parties would arrive and fall an easy prey. 
Having come one morning upon three armed overlanders lying 
fast asleep, while a fourth kept guard, by a fire which coincided 
with a gap in the posts, but which was far from any timber or 
even scrub, I have my doubts as to whether " white Indians " 
have not much to do with the destruction of the line. 

From one of the uplands of the Artemisia barrens we sighted 
at once Fremont's Peak on the north, and another great snow- 
dome on the south. The unknown mountain was both the 
more distant and the loftier of the two, yet the maps mark no 
chain within eyeshot to the southward. The country on either 
side of this well-worn track is still as little known as when 
Captain Stansbury explored it in 1850 ; and when we crossed 
the Green River, as the Upper Colorado is called, it was strange 
to remember that the stream is here lost in a thousand miles of 
undiscovered wilds, to be found again flowing tow^ards Mexico. 
Near the ferry is the place where Albert S. Johnson's mule 
trains were captured by the Mormons under General Lot 
Smith. 

In the middle of the night we would come upon mule-trains 
starting on their march in order to avoid the mid-day sun, and 
thus save water, which they are sometimes forced to carry with 
them for as much as fifty miles, When we found them halted, 
they were always camped on bluffs and in bends, far from rocks 
and tufts, behind which the Indians might creep and stampede 
the cattle : this they do by suddenly swooping down with fear- 
ful noises, and riding in among the mules or oxen at full speed. 
The beasts break away in their fright, and are driven off before 
the sentries have time to turn out the camp. 

On the fourth day from Denver the scenery was tame enough, 
but strange in the extreme. Its characteristic feature was its 
breadth. No longer the rocky defiles of Virginia Dale, no 
longer the glimpses of the main range as from Laramie Plains 
and the foot hills of Medecine Bow, but great rolHng downs 
like those of the Plains much magnified. We crossed one of 
the highest open passes in the Vv^orld without seeing snow, but 
looked back directly we were through it on snow-fields behind 
us and all around. 

At Elk Mountain we suffered greatly from the frost, but by 



96 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiii. 

mid-day we were taking off our coats, and the mules hanging 
their heads in the sun once more, while those which should 
have taken their places were, as the ranchman expressed it, 
''kicking their heels in pure cussedness" at a stream some ten 
miles away. 

While walking before the " hack " through the burning sand 
of Bitter Creek, I put up a bird as big as a turkey, which must, 
I suppose, have been a vulture. The sage-brush growing here 
as much as three feet high, and as stout and gnarled as century- 
old heather, gave shelter to a few coveys of sage-hens, at which 
we shot without much success, although they seldom ran, and 
never rose. Their colour is that of the brush itself — a yellowish 
grey — and it is as hard to see them as to pick up a partridge 
on a sun-dried fallow at home in England. Of wolves and 
rattlesnakes there were plenty, but of big game we saw but 
little, only a few black-tails in the day. 

This track is more travelled by trains than is the Smoky Hill 
route, which accounts for the absence of game on the line ; but 
that there is plenty close at hand is clear from the way we were 
fed. Smoky Hill starvation was forgotten in piles of steaks of 
elk and antelope ; but still no fruit, no vegetable, no bread, no 
drink save " sage-brush tea," and that half poisoned with the 
water of the alkaline creeks. 

Jerked buffalo had disappeared from our meals. The droves 
never visit the Sierra Madre now, and scientific books have said 
that in the mountains they were ever unknown. In Bridger's 
Pass we saw the skulls of not less than twenty buffalo, which is 
proof enough that they once were here, though perhaps long 
ago. The skin and bones will last about a year after the beast 
has died, for the wolves tear them to pieces to get at the marrow 
within, but the skull they never touch ; and the oldest ranch- 
man failed to give me an answer as to how long skulls and 
horns might last. We saw no buffalo roads like those across 
the Plains. 

From the absence of buffalo, absence of birds, absence of 
flowers, absence even of Indians, the Rocky Mountain plateau 
is more of a solitude than are the Plains. It takes days to see 
this, for you naturally notice it less. On the Plains, the glorious 
climate, the masses of rich blooming plants, the millions of 



CHAP. XIII.] ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 97 

beasts, and insects, and birds, all seem prepared to the hand of 
man, and for man you are continually searching. Each time 
you round a hill, you look for the smoke of the farm. Here on 
the mountains you feel as you do on the sea : it is nature's own 
solitude, but from no fault of ours — the higher parts of the 
plateau were not made for man. 

Early on the fifth night we dashed suddenly out of utter 
darkness into ■ a mountain glen blazing with fifty fires, and per- 
fumed with the scent of burning cedar. As many wagons as 
there were fires were corralled in an ellipse about the road, and 
600 cattle were pastured within the fire-glow in rich grass that 
told of water. Men and women were seated round the camp- 
fires praying and singing hymns. As we drove in, they rose and 
cheered us " on your way to Zion !" Our Gentile driver yelled 
back the war-whoop " How ! How ! How ! How — w ! We'll give 
yer love to Brigham ;" and back went the poor travellers to their 
prayers again. It was a bull-train of the Mormon immigration. 

Five minutes after we had passed the camp we were back in 
civilization, and plunged into polygamous society all at once, 
with Bishop Myers, the keeper of Bear River ranch, drawing 
water from the well, while Mrs. Myers No. i cooked the chops, 
and Mrs. Myers No. 2 laid the table neatly. 

The kind Bishop made us sit before the fire till we were 
warm, and filled our " hack " with hay, that we might continue 
so, and off we went, inclined to look favourably on polygamy 
after such experience of polygamists. 

Leaving Bear River about midnight, at t^vo o'clock in the 
morning of the sixth day we began the descent of Echo Can- 
yon, the grandest of all the gully passes of the Wasatch Range, 
The night was so clear that I was able to make some outline 
sketches of the cliffs from the ranch where we changed mules. 
Echo Canyon is the Thermopylae of Utah, the pass that the 
Mormons fortified against the United States' forces under Albert 
S. Johnson at the time of " Buchanan's raid." Twenty-six 
miles long, often not more than a few yards wide at the bottom, 
and a few hundred feet at the top, with an overhanging cliff on 
the north side, and a mountain wall on the south, Echo Canyon 
would be no easy pass to force. Government will do well to 
prevent the Pacific railroad from following this defile, 

H 



98 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiii. 

After breakfast at Coalville, the Mormon Newcastle, situated 
in a smiling valley not unlike that between Martigny and Saint 
Maurice, we dashed on past Kimball's ranch, where we once 
more hitched horses instead of mules, and began our descent 
of seventeen miles down Big Canyon, the best of all the passes 
of the Wasatch. Rounding a spur at the end of our six-hun- 
dredth mile from Denver, we first sighted the Mormon promised 
land. 

The sun was setting over the great dead lake to our right, 
lighting up the valley with a silvery gleam from Jordan River, 
and the hills with a golden glow from off the snow-fields of the 
many mountain chains and peaks around. In our front, the 
Oquirrh, or Western Range, stood out in sharp purple outlines 
upon a sea-coloured sky. To our left were the Utah mountains, 
blushing rose, and all about our heads the Wasatch glowing in 
orange and gold. From the flat valley in the sunny distance 
rose the smoke of many houses, the dust of many droves ; on 
the bench-land of Ensign Peak, on the lake side, white houses 
peeped modestly from among the peach-trees, and hinted the 
presence, of the city. 

Heie was Plato's table-land of the Atlantic isle — one great 
field of corn and wheat, where only twenty years ago Fremont, 
the Pathfinder, reported wheat and corn impossible. 



99 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Brigham Young. 

" I LOOK upon Mohamed and Brigham as the very best men 
that God could send as ministers to those unto whom He sent 
them," wrote Elder Frederick Evans, of the " Shaker " .village of 
New Lebanon, in a letter to us, inclosing another by w^ay of 
introduction to the MoiTnon president. 

Credentials from the Shaker to the Mormon chief — from the 
great living exponent of the principle of celibacy to the " most 
married man" in all America — were not to be kept undelivered ; 
so the moment we had bathed we posted off to a merchant to 
whom we had letters, that we might inquire when his spiritual 
chief and military ruler would be home again from his " trip 
north." The answer was, "To-morrow." 

After watching the last gleams fade from the snow-fields upon 
the Wasatch, we parted for the night, as I had to sleep in a 
private house, the hotel being filled even to the balcony. As I 
entered the drawing-room of my entertainer, I heard the voice 
of a lady reading, and caught enough of what she said to be 
aware that it was a defence of polygamy. She ceased when 
she saw the stranger ; but I found that it was my host's first 
wife reading Belinda Pratt's book to her daughters — girls just 
blooming into womanhood. 

After an agreeable chat with the ladies, doubly pleasant as it 
followed upon a long absence from civilization, I went to my 
room, which I afterwards found to be that of the eldest son, a 
youth of sixteen years. In one corner stood two Ballard rifles, 
and two revolvers and a mihtia uniform hung from pegs upon 
the wall. When I lay down with my hands underneath the 
pillow — an attitude instinctively adopted to escape the sand- 

H 2 



roo GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiv. 

flies, I touched something cold. I felt it — a full-sized Colt, and 
capped. Such was ray first introduction to Utah Mormonism. 

On the morrow, we had the first and most formal of our four 
interviews with the Mormon president, the conversation lasting 
three hours, and all the leading men of the Church being present. 
When we rose to leave, Brigham said : " Come to see me here 
again : Brother Stenhouse will show you everything ;" and then 
blessed us in these words : " Peace be with you, in the name of 
the Lord Jesus Christ." 

Elder Stenhouse followed us out of the presence, and some- 
what anxiously put the odd question : " Well, is he a white 
man ?" " White " is used in Utah as a general term of praise : 
a white man is a man — to use our corresponding idiom — not 
so black- as he is painted. A " white country " is a country 
with grass and trees ; just as a white man means a man who is 
morally not a Ute, so a white country is a land in which others 
than Utes can dwell. 

We made some complimentary answer to Stenhouse's question; 
but it was impossible not to feel that the real point was : Is 
Brigham sincere ? 

Brigham's deeds have been those of a sincere man. His 
bitterest opponents cannot dispute the fact that in 1844, when 
Nauvoo was about to be deserted, owing to the attacks of a 
ruffianly mob, Brigham rushed to the front, and took the chief 
command. To be a Mormon leader then was to be a leader of 
an outcast people, with a price set on his head, in a Missourian 
county in which almost every man who was not a Mormon was 
by profession an assassin. In the sense, too, of believing that he 
is what he professes to be, Brigham is undoubtedly sincere. In 
the wider sense of being that which he professes to be he comes 
off as well, if only we will read his words in the way he speaks 
them. He tells us that he is a prophet — God's representative 
on earth ; but when I asked him whether he was of a wholly 
different spiritual rank to that held by other devout men, he 
said : " By no means. I am a prophet — one of many. All good 
men are prophets ; but God has blessed me with peculiar favour 
in revealing His will oftener and more clearly through me than 
through other men." 

Those who would understand Brigham's revelations must 



CHAP. XIV.] BRIGHAM YOUNG. loi 

read Bentham. The leading Mormons are utilitarian deists. 
"God's will be done," they, like other deists, say is to be our 
rule ; and God's will they find in wTitten Revelation and in 
Utility. God has given men, by the actual hand of angels, the 
Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Book of Covenants, the revela- 
tions upon Plural Marriage. When these are exhausted, man, 
seeking for God's will, has to turn to the principle of Utility : 
that which is for the happiness of mankind — that is, of the 
Church — is God's will, and must be done. While Utility is 
their only index to God's pleasure, they admit that the Church 
must be ruled — that opinions may differ as to" what is the good 
of the Church, and therefore the will of God. They meet, then, 
annually, in an assembly of the people, and electing Church 
officers by popular will and acclamation, they see God's finger 
in the ballot-box. They say, like the Jews in the election of 
their judges, that the choice of the people is the choice of God. 
This is what men like John Taylor or Daniel Wells appear to 
feel ; the ignorant are permitted to look upon Brigham as some- 
thing more than man, and though Brigham himself does nothing 
to confirm this view, the leaders foster the delusion. When I 
asked Stenhouse, " Has Brigham's re-election as Prophet ever 
been opposed ?" he answered sharply, " I should like to see 
the man who'd do it." 

Brigham's personal position is a strange one : he calls himself 
Prophet, and declares that he has revelations from God himself, 
but when you ask him quietly what all this means, you find that 
for Prophet you should read Political Philosopher. He sees 
that a canal from Utah Lake to Salt Lake Valley would be of 
vast utility to the Church and people — that a new settlement is 
urgently required. He thinks about these things till they 
dominate in his mind, and take in his brain the shape of physical 
creations. He dreams of the canal, the city ; sees them before 
him in his waking moments. That which is so clearly for the 
good of God's people, becomes God's \\^11. Next Sunday at the 
Tabernacle, he steps to the front, and says : " God has spoken ; 
He has said unto His prophet, 'Get thee up, Brigham, and 
build Me a city in the fertile valley to the South, where there is 
water, where there are fish, where the sun is strong enough to 
ripen the cotton plants, and give raiment as well as food to my 



I02 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiv. 

saints on earth.' Brethren wiUing to aid God's work should 
come to me before the Bishops' meeting." As the Prophet 
takes his seat again, and puts on his broad-brimmed hat, a hum 
of applause runs round the bowery, and teams and barrows are 
freely promised. 

Sometimes the canal, the bridge, the city may prove a failure, 
but this is not concealed : the Prophet's human tongue may 
blunder even when he is communicating holy things. 

"After all," Brigham said to me the day before I left, " the 
highest inspiration is good sense — the knowing what to do, and 
how to do it." 

In all this it is hard for us, with our Enghsh hatred of casuistry 
and hair-splitting, to see sincerity; still, given his foundation, 
Brigham is sincere. Like other political religionists, he must 
feel himself morally bound to stick at nothing when the interests 
of the Church a,re at stake. To prefer man's life or property to 
the service of God must be a crime in such a Church. The 
Mormons deny the truth of the murder-stories alleged against 
the Danites, but they avoid doing so in sweeping or even general 
terms — though, if need were, of course they would be bound to 
lie as well as to kill in the name of God and His holy prophet. 

The secret polity which I have sketched gives, evidently, 
enormous power to some one man within the Church , but the 
Mormon constitution does not very clearly point out who that 
man shall be. With a view to the possible future failure of 
leaders of great personal qualifications, the First Presidency 
consists of three members with equal rank ; but to his place in 
the Trinity, Brigham unites the office of Trustee in Trust, which 
gives him the control of the funds and tithing, or Church 
taxation. 

All are not agreed as to what should be Brigham's place in 
Utah. Stenhouse said one day : " I am one of those who 
think that our President should do everything. -He has made 
this Church and this country, and should have his way in 
all things ; saying so gets me into trouble with some." The 
writer of a report of Brigham's tour, which appeared in the 
Salt Lake Telegraph the day we reached the city, used the 
words : " God never spoke through man more clearly than 
through President Young." 



CUAP. XIV.] BRIGHAM YOUNG. 103 

One day, when Stenhouse was speaking of the moraUty of 
the Mormon people, he said : " Our penalty for adultery is 
death." Remembering the Danites, we were down on him at 
once : '' Do you inflict it ? " " No ; but — well, not practically; 
but really it is so. A man who commits adultery withers away 
and perishes. A man sent away from his wives upon a mission 
that may last for years, if he lives not purely — if, when he 
returns, he cannot meet the eye of Brigham, better for him to 
be at once in hell. He withers." 

Brigham himself has spoken in strong words of his own 
power over the Mormon people : " Let the talking folk at 
Washington say, if they please, that I am no longer Governor 
of Utah. I am, and will be Governor, until God Almighty 
says, ' Brigham, you need not be Governor any more. ' " 

Brigham's head is that of a man who nowhere could be 
second. 



ro4 GREATER BRlTAm. (Chai». sv. 



CHAPTER XV. 

MORMONDOM. 

We had been presented at court, and favourably received j 
asked to call again ; admitted to State secrets of the presi- 
dency. From this moment our position in the city was secured. 
Mormon seats in the theatre were placed at our disposal; the 
director of immigration, the presiding bishop, Colonel Hunter 
— a grim, weather-beaten Indian fighter — and his coadjutors 
carried us off to see the reception of the bull-train at the 
Elephant Corral ; we were offered a team to take us to the 
Lake, which we refused only because we had already accepted 
the loan of one from a Gentile merchant ; presents of peaches 
and invitations to lunch, dinner, and supper, came pouring in 
upon us from all sides. In a single morning we were visited 
by four of the Apostles and nine other leading members of the 
Church. Ecclesiastical dignitaries sat upon our single chair 
and wash-hand-stand ; and one bed groaned under the weight 
of George A. Smith, " Church historian," while the other bore 
T^sop's load — the peaches he had brought. These growers of 
fruit from standard trees think but small things of our English 
wall-fruit, " baked on one side, and frozen on the other," as they 
say. There is a mellowness about the Mormon peaches that 
would drive our gardeners to despair. 

One of our callers was Captain Hooper, the Utah delegate 
to Congress. He is an adept at the Western plan of getting 
out of a fix by telling you a story. When we laughingly alluded 
to his lack of wives, and the absurdity of a monogamist repre- 
senting Utah, he said that the people at Washington all believed 
that Utah had sent them a polygamist. There is a rule that no 
one with the entry shall take more than one lady, to the White 



CHAP. XV.] MORMONDOM. X05 

House receptions. A member of Congress was urged by three 
ladies to take them with him. He, as men do, said, " The 
thing is impossible " — and did it. Presenting himself with the 
bevy at the door, the usher stopped him : " Can't pass ; only 
one friend admitted with each member." "Suppose, sir, that 
I'm the delegate from Utah territory ? " said the Congress-man. 
" Oh, pass in, sir — pass in," was the instant answer of the 
usher. The story reminds me of poor Browne's " family " 
ticket to his lecture at Salt Lake City : " Admit the bearer and 
OJie wife." Hooper is said to be under pressure at this moment 
on the question of polygamy, for he is a favourite with the 
Prophet, who cannot, however, with consistency promote him 
to office in the Church on account of a saying of his own : " A 
man with one wife is of less account before God than a man 
with no wives at all." 

Our best opportunity of judging of the Mormon ladies was 
at the theatre, which we attended regularly, sitting now in Elder 
Stenhouse's " family " seats, now with General Wells. Here 
we saw the wives of the leading Churchmen of the city ; in 
their houses, we saw only those they chose to show us : in no 
case but that of the Clawson family did we meet in society all 
the wives. We noticed at once that the leading ladies were all 
alike — full of taste, full of sense, but full, at the same time, of 
a kind of unconscious melancholy. Everywhere, as you looked 
round the house, you met the sad eye which I had seen but 
once before — among the Shakers at New Lebanon. The women 
here, knowing no other state, seem to think themselves as happy 
as the day is long : their eye alone is there to show the Gentile 
that they are, if the expression may be allowed, unhappy with- 
out knowing it. That these Mormon women love their religion 
and reverence its priests is but a consequence of its being "their 
religion " — the system in the midst of which they have been 
brought up. Who of us is there that does not set up some idol 
in his heart round which he weaves all that he has of poetry 
and devotion in his character? — art, hero-worship, patriotism 
are forms of this great tendency. That the Mormon girls, who 
are educated as highly as those of any country in the world — 
who, like all American girls, are allowed to wander where they 
please — who are certain of protection in any of the fifty Gentile 



io6 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xv. 

houses in the city, and absolutely safe in Camp Douglas at the 
distance of two miles from the city wall — all consent delibe- 
rately to enter on polygamy, shows clearly enough that they 
can, as a rule, have no dislike to it beyond such a feeling as 
public opinion will speedily overcome. 

Discussion of the institution of plural marriage in Salt Lake 
City is fruitless ; all that can be done is to observe. In assault- 
ing the Mormon citadel, you strike against the air. "Polygamy 
degrades the woman," you begin. " Morally or socially ? " says 
the Mormon. " Socially." " Granted," is the reply, " and 
that is a most desirable consummation. By socially lowering, 
it morally raises the woman. It makes her a servant, but it 
makes her pure and good." 

It is always well to remember that if we have one argument 
against polygamy which from our Gentile point of view is 
unanswerable, it is not necessary that we should rack our brains 
for others. All our modern experience is favourable to rank- 
ing woman as man's equal ; polygamy assumes that she shall 
be his servant — loving, faithful, cheerful, willing, but still a 
servant. 

The opposite poles upon the women question are Utah poly- 
gamy and Kansas female suffrage. 



107 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Western Editors. 

The attack upon Mormondom has been systematized, and is 
conducted with mihtary skill, by trench and parallel. The 
New England papers having called for "facts" whereon to 
base their homilies, General Connor, of Fenian fame, set up 
the U7iion Vedette in Salt Lake City, and publishes on Saturdays 
a sheet expressly intended for Eastern reading. The mantle of 
the Sangamo Journal has fallen on the Vedette^ and John C. 
Bennett is effaced by Connor. From this source it is that 
come the whole of the paragraphs against Brigham and all 
Mormondom which fill the Eastern papers, and find their way 
to London. The editor has to cram his paper with peppery 
leaders, well-spiced telegrams, stinging " facts." Every week 
there must be something that can be used and quoted against 
Brigham. The Eastern remarks upon quotations are in turn 
quoted at Salt Lake. Under such circumstances, even tele- 
grams can be made to take a flavour. In to-day's Vedette we 
have one from St. Joseph, describing how above one thousand 
" of these dirty, filthy dupes of the Great Salt Lake iniquity" 
are now squatting round the packet depot, awaiting transport. 
Another from Chicago tells us that the seven thousand Euro- 
pean Mormons who have this year passed up the Missouri 
river " are of the lowest and most ignorant classes." The 
leader is directed against Mormons in general, and Stenhouse 
in particular, as editor of one of the Mormon papers, and ex- 
postmaster of the territory. He has already had cause to fear 
the Vedette^ as it was through the exertions of its editor that he 
lost his office. This matter is referred to in the leader of 
to-day : " When we found our letters scattered about the 



io8 GREATER BRITAIN. ' [chap. xvi. 

Streets in fragments, we succeeded in getting an honest post- 
master appointed in place of the editor of the Telegraph — an 
organ where even carrots, pumpkins, and potatoes are current 
funds — directed by a chque of foreign writers, who can hardly 
speak our language, and who never drew a loyal breath since 
they came to Utah." The Mormon tax frauds, and the 
Mormon police, likewise come in for their share of abuse, 
and the writer concludes with a pathetic plea against arrest 
" for quietly indulging in a glass of wine in a private room 
with a friend." 

Attacks such as these make one understand the suspicious- 
ness of the Mormon leaders, and the slowness of Stenhouse 
and his friends to take a joke if it concerns the Church. 
Artemus Ward once wrote to Stenhouse, " Ef you can't take a 
joke, you'll be darned, and you oughter ;" but the jest at which 
he can laugh has wrought no cure. Heber Kimball said to me 

one day : " They're all alike. There was came here to 

write a book, and we thought better of him than of most. I 
showed him more kindness than I ever showed a man before or 
since, and then he called me a 'hoary reprobate.' I would 
advise him not to pass this way next time." 

The suspicion often takes odd shapes. One Sunday morning, 
at the tabernacle, I remarked that the Prophet's daughter, Zina, 
had on the same dress as she had worn the evening before at 
the theatre, in playing " Mrs. Musket " in the farce of " My 
Husband's Ghost." It was a black silk gown, with a vandyke 
flounce of white, impossible to mistake. I pointed it out in 
joke to a Mormon friend, when he denied my assertion in the 
most emphatic way, although he could not have known for 
certain that I was wrong, as he sat next to me in the theatre 
during the whole play. 

The Mormons will talk freely of their own suspiciousness. 
They say that the coldness with which travellers are usually 
received at Salt Lake City is the consequence of years of total 
misrepresentation. They forget that they are arguing in a circle, 
and that this misrepresentation is itself sometimes the result of 
their reserve. 

The news and advertisements are even more amusing than 
the leaders in the Vedette, A paragraph tells us, for instance. 



CHAP. XVI.] WESTERN EDITORS. 109 

that "Mrs. Martha Stewart and Mrs. Robertson, of San 
Antonio, lately had an impromptu fight with revolvers ; Mrs. 
Stewart was badly winged." Nor is this the only reference in 
the paper to shooting by ladies, as another paragraph relates 
how a young girl, frightened by a sham ghost, drew on the 
would-be apparition, and with six barrels shot him twice 
through the head, and four times " in the region of the heart." 
A quotation from the Owyhee Avalanche^ speaking of gambling 
hells, tells us that " one hurdy shebang " in Silver City shipped 
8000 dollars as the net proceeds of its July business. " These 
leeches corral more clear cash than most quartz mills," remon- 
strates the editor. " Corral " is the Mexican cattle inclosure ; 
the yard where the team mules are ranched ; the kraal of Cape 
Colony, which, on the Plains and the Plateau, serves as a fort 
for men as well as a fold for oxen, and resembles the serai of 
the East. The word " to corral " means to shut into one of 
these pens ; and thence " to pouch," " to pocket," " to bag," 
to get well into hand. 

The advertisements are in keeping with the news. " Every- 
thing, from a salamander safe to a Limerick fish-hook," is 
offered by one firm, " Fifty-three and a half and three and 
three-quarter thimble-skein Schuttler wagons," is offered by 
another. An advertiser bids us " Spike the Guns of Humbug ! 
and Beware of Deleterious Dyes ! Refuse to have your Heads 
Baptized with Liquid Fire ! " Another says, " If you want a 
paper free from entanglements of cliques, and antagonistic to 
the corrupting evils of factionism, subscribe to the Montana 
Radiator'' Nothing beats the following : " Butcher's dead-shot 
for bed-bugs ! Curls them up as fire does a leaf ! Try it, and 
sleep in peace ! Sold by all live druggists." 

If we turn to the other Salt Lake papers, the Telegraph., an 
independent Mormon paper, and the Deseret News, the official 
journal of the Church, we find a contrast to the trash of the 
Vedette. Brigham's paper, clearly printed and of a pleasant 
size, is filled with the best and latest news from the outlving 
portions of the territory, and from Europe. The motto on its 
head is a simple one — " Truth and Liberty ;" and twenty-eight 
columns of solid news are given us. Among the items is an 
account of a fight upon the Smoky Hill route, which occurred 



no GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xvi. 

on the day we reached this city, and in which two teamsters — 
George Hill and Luke West — were killed by the Kiowas and 
Cheyennes. A loyal Union article from the pen of Albert 
Carrington, the editor, is followed by one upon the natural 
advantages of Utah, in which the writer complains that the 
very men who ridiculed the Mormons for settling in a desert 
are now declaiming against their being allowed to squat upon 
one of the "most fertile locations in the United States." The 
paper asserts that Mormon success is secured only by Mormon 
industry, and that as a merely commercial speculation, apart 
from the religious impulse, the cultivation of Utah would not 
pay : " Utah is no place for the loafer or the lazy man." An 
official report, like the Court Circular of England, is headed, 
" President Brigham Young's trip North," and is signed by 
G. D. Watt, " Reporter" to the Church. The Old Testament 
is not spared. " From what we saw of the timbered moun- 
tains," writes one reporter, " we had no despondency of Israel 
ever failing for material to build up, beautify, and adorn plea- 
sant habitations in that part of Zion." A theatrical criticism is 
not wanting, and the Church actors come in for " praise all 
around." In another part of the paper are telegraphic reports 
from the captains of the seven immigrant trains not yet come 
in, giving their position, and details of the number of days' 
march for which they have provisions still in hand. One 
reports " thirty-eight head of cattle stolen ; " another, " a good 
deal of mountain fever ; " but, on the whole, the telegrams look 
well. The editor, speaking of the two English visitors now in 
the city, says: "We greet them to our mountain habitation, 
and bid them welcome to our orchard ; and that's considerable 
for an editor, especially if he has plural responsibilities to look 
after." Bishop Harrington reports from American Fork that 
everybody is thriving there, and " doing as the Mormon creed 
directs — minding their own business." " That's good. Bishop," 
says the editor. The " Passenger List of the 2nd Ox Train, 
Captain J. D. HoUaday," is given at length ; about half the 
immigrants come with wife and family, very many with five or 
six children. From Liverpool, the chief office for Europe, 
comes a gazette of " Releases and Appointments," signed 
" Brigham Young, Jun., President of the Church of Jesus 



CHAP. XVI.] WESTERN EDITORS. in 

Christ of Latter-day Saints in the British Isles and iVdjacent 
Countries," accompanied by a despatch, in which the " Presi- 
dent for England " gives details of his visits to the Saints in 
Norway, and of his conversations with the United States' minister 
at St. Petersburg. 

The Telegraph, like its editor, is practical, and does not deal 
in extract. All the sheet, with the exception of a few columns, 
is taken up with business advertisements ; but these are not the 
least amusing part of the paper. A gigantic figure of a man in 
high boots and felt hat, standing on a ladder and pasting up 
Messrs. Eldredge and Clawson's dry-goods advertisement, occu- 
pies nearly half the back page. Mr. Birch informs " parties 
hauling wheat from San Pete county " that his mill at Fort Birch 
" is now running, is protected by a stone-wall fortification, and 
is situate at the mouth of Salt Canyon, just above Nephi City, 
Juab County, on the direct road to Pahranagat." A view of 
the fort, with posterns, parapets, embrasures, and a giant flag, 
heads the advertisement. The cuts are not always so cheerful : 
one Far- Western paper fills three-quarters of its front page with 
an engraving of a coffin. The editorial columns contain calls 
to the "brethren with teams " to aid the immigrants, an account 
of a " rather mixed case " of " double divorce " (Gentile), and 
of a prosecution of a man "for violation of the seventh com- 
mandment" A Mormon police report is headed " One drunk 
at the Calaboose." Defending himself against charges of 
" directing bishops " and " steadying the ark," the editor calls 
on the bishops to shorten their sermons : " we may get a crack 
for this, but we can't help it. We like variety, life, and short 
meetings." In a paragraph about his visitors, our friend the 
editor of the Telegraph said, a day or two after our arrival in 
the city : " If a stranger can escape the strychnine chque for 
three days after arrival, he is for ever afterwards safe. Generally 
the first twenty-four hours are sufficient to prostrate even the 
very robust." In a few words of regret at a change in the 
Denver newspaper staff" our editor says : " However, a couple 
of sentences indicate that George has no intention of abandon- 
ing the tripod. That's right : keep at it, my boy ; misery likes 
company." 

The day after we reached Denver, the Gazette, commenting 



112 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xvi. 

on this same " George," said : " Captain West has left the 
Rocky Mountains' News Office. We are not surprised, as we 
could never see how any respectable decent gentleman like 
George could get along with Governor Evans' paid hireling and 
whelp who edits that delectable sheet." Of the two papers 
which exist in every town in the Union, each is always at work 
attempting to " use up " the other. I have seen the democratic 
print of Chicago call its republican opponent "a radical, dis- 
union, disreputable, bankrupt, emasculated evening newspaper 
concern of this city " — a string of terms by the side of which 
even Western utterances pale. 

A paragraph headed " The Millennium " tells us that the 
editors of the Telegraph and Deseret News were seen yesterday 
afternoon walking together towards the Twentieth Ward. 
Another paragraph records the ill success of an expedition 
against Indians who had been "raiding" down in "Dixie," or 
South Utah. A general order signed " Lieut. -General Daniel 
H. Wells," and dated " Head-quarters, Nauvoo Legion," directs 
the assembly, for a three days' " big drill," of the forces of the 
various military districts of the territory. The name of " Ter- 
ritorial Militia," under which alone the United States can permit 
the existence of the legion, is carefully omitted. This is not 
the only warlike advertisement in the paper : fourteen cases of 
Ballard rifles are offered in exchange for cattle ; and other firms 
offer tents and side-arms to their friends. Amusements are not 
forgotten : a cricket match between two Mormon settlements 
in Cache county is recorded, " Wellsville whipping Brigham 
city with six wickets to go down ;" and is followed by an article 
in which the First President may have had a hand, pointing out 
that the Salt Lake Theatre is going to be the greatest of thea- 
tres, and that the favour of its audience is a passport beyond 
Wallack's, and equal to Dmry Lane or the Haymarket. In 
sharp contrast to these signs of present prosperity, the First 
Presidency announce the annual gathering of the surviving 
members of Zion's camp, the association of the first immigrant 
band. 

There is about the Mormon papers much that tells of long 
settlement and prosperity. When I showed Stenhouse the 
Denver Gazette of our second day in that town, he said : " Well, 



CHAP. xvT.] WESTERN EDITORS. 113 

Telegraph's better than that 1" The Denver sheet is a Hterary 
curiosity of the first order. Printed on chocolate-coloured 
paper, in ink of a not much darker hue, it is in parts illegible — 
to the reader's regret, for what we were able to make out was 
good enough to make us wish for more. 

The difference between the Mormon and Gentile papers is 
strongly marked in the advertisements. The Denver Gazette is 
filled with puffs of quacks and whisky-shops. In the column 
headed " Business Cards," Dr. Ermerins announces that he may 
be consulted by his patients in the " French, German, and 
English " tongues. Lower down we have the card of " Dr. 
Treat, Eclectic Physician and Surgeon," which is preceded by 
an advertisement of " Sulkies made to Order," and followed by 
a leaded heading, " Know thy Destiny : Madame Thornton, 
the English Astrologist and Psychometrician, has located her- 
self at Hudson, New York ; by the aid of an instrument of 
intense power, known as the Psychomotrope, she guarantees to 
produce a lifelike picture of the future husband or wife of the 
applicant." There is a strange turning towards the supernatural 
among this people. Astrology is openly professed as a science 
throughout the United States ; the success of spiritualism is 
amazing. The most sensible men are not exempt from the 
weakness : the dupes of the astrologers are not the uneducated 
Irish ; they are the strong-minded, half-educated Western men, 
shrewd and keen in trade, brave in war, material and cold in 
faith, it would be supposed, but credulous to folly, as we know, 
when personal revelation, the supematuralism of the present 
day, is set before them in the crudest and least attractive forms. 
A little lower, "Charley Eyser" and "Gus Fogus" advertise 
their bars. The latter announces " Lager beer at only 10 cents," 
in a " cool retreat," " fitted up with green-growing trees." A re- 
turned warrior heads his announcement, in huge capitals, " Back 
Home Again, an Old Hand at the Bellows, the Soldier Black- 
smith : — S. M. Logan." In a country where weights and mea- 
sures are rather a matter of practice than of law, Mr. O'Connell 
does well to add to " Lager beer 15 cents," " Glasses hold Two 
Bushels." John Morris, of the "Little Giant" or "Theatre 
Saloon," asks us to " call and see him ;" while his rivals of the 
" Progressive Saloon " offer the " finest liquors that the East 

I 



IJ4 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xvi. 

can command." Morris Sigi, whose ^' lager is pronounced 
A No. I by all who have used it," bids us " give him a fair trial, 
and satisfy ourselves as to the false reports in circulation." 
Daniel Marsh, dealer in " breech-loading guns and revolvers," 
adds, " and anything that may be wanted, from a cradle to a 
coffin, both inclusive, made to order. An Indian Lodge on 
view, for sale." This is the man at whose shop scalps hang for 
sale ; but he fails to say so in his advertisement : the Utes 
brought them in too late for insertion, perhaps. 

Advertisements of freight-trains now starting to the East, of 
mail coaches to Buckskin Joe — advertisements slanting, topsy- 
turvy, and sideways turned — complete the outer sheet; but 
some of them, through bad ink, printer's errors, strange English, 
and wilder Latin, are wholly unintelligible. It is hard to make 
much of this, for instance : " Mr. ^sculapius, no offense, I hope, 
as this is written extempore and ipso facto. But, perhaps, I ought 
not to disregard ex unci disce omnes." 

In an editorial on the English visitors then in Denver, the 
chance of putting into their mouths a puff of the territory of 
Colorado was not lost. We were made to "appreciate the 
native energy and wealth of industry necessary in building up 
such a Star of Empire as Colorado." The next paragraph is 
communicated from Conejos, in the south of the territory, and 
says : " The election has now passed off, and I am confident 
that we can beat any ward in Denver, and give them two in the 
game, for rascality in voting." Another leader calls on the 
people of Denver to remember that there are two men in the 
calaboose for mule-stealing, and that the last man locked up for 
the offence was allowed to escape : some cottonwood trees still 
exist, it believes. In former times, there was for the lynching 
here hinted at a reason which no longer exists : a man shut up 
in gaol built of adobe, or sun-dried brick, could scratch his way 
through the crumbling wall in two days, so the citizens generally 
hanged him in oJie. Now that the gaols are in brick and stone, 
the job might safely be left to the sheriff; but the people of 
Denver seem to trust themselves better even than they do their 
delegate, Bob Wilson. 

A year or two ago, the gaols were so crazy, that Coloradan 
criminals, when given their choice whether they would be 



CMAP. XVI.] WESTER2^ EDITORS. 115 

hanged in a week, or "as soon after breakfast to-morrow as 
shall be convenient to the sheriff and agreeable, Mr. Prisoner, 
to you," as the Texan formula runs, used to elect for the quick 
delivery, on the ground that otherwise they would catch their 
deaths of cold — at least, so the Denver story runs. They 
have, however, a method of getting the gaols inspected here 
which might be found useful at home : it consists in the simple 
plan of giving the governor of a gaol an opportunity of seeing 
the practical working of the system by locking him up inside 
for a while. 

These Far-Western papers are written or compiled under 
difficulties almost overwhelming. Mr. Frederick J. Stanton, 
at Denver, told me that often he had been forced to " set up " 
and print as well as " edit " the paper which he owns. Type 
is not always to be found. In its early days, the California 
Alia once appeared with a paragraph which ran : " I have no 
VV in my type, as there is none in the Spanish alphabet. I 
have sent to the Sandwich Islands for this letter ; in the 
meantime we must use two Vs." 

Till I had seen the editors' rooms in Denver, Austin, and 
Salt Lake City, 1 had no conception of the point to which 
discomfort could be carried. For all these hardships, payment 
is small and slow. It consists often of little but the satisfaction 
which it is to the editor's vanity to be " liquored " by the best 
man of the place, treated to an occasional chat with the 
governor of the territory, to a chair in the Overland Mail Office 
whenever he walks in, to the hand of the hotel proprietor when- 
ever he comes near the bar, and to a pistol-shot once or twice 
in a month. 

It must not be supposed that the Vedette does the Mormons 
no harm ; the perpetual reiteration in the Eastern and Enghsh 
papers of three sets of stories alone would suffice to break down 
a flourishing power. The three lines that are invariably taken 
as foundations for their stories are these — that the Mormon 
women are ^vretched, and would fain get away, but are checked 
by the Danites ; that the Mormons are anxious to fight with 
the Federal troops ; that robbery of the people by the apostles 
and elders is at the bottom of Mormonism — or, as the Vedette 
puts it, " on tithing and loaning hang all the law and the profits." 

I 2 



ii6 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xvi. 

If the mere fact of the existence of the Vedette effectually 
refutes the stories of the acts of the Danites in these modem 
days, and therefore disposes of the first set of stories, the 
third is equally answered by a glance at its pages. Columns 
of paragraphs, sheets of advertisements, testify to the founda- 
tion by industry, in the most frightful desert on earth, of an 
agricultural community which California herself cannot match. 
The Mormons may well call their country " Deseret " — " land 
of the bee." The process of fertilization goes on day by day. 
Six or seven years ago, Southern Utah was a desert bare as 
Salt Bush Plains. Irrigation from the fresh-water lake was 
carried out under episcopal direction, and the result is the 
growth of fifty kinds of grapes alone. Cotton mills and vine- 
yards are springing up on every side, and " Dixie " begins to 
look down on its parent, the Salt Lake Valley. Irrigation from 
the mountain rills has done this miracle, we say, though the 
Saints undoubtedly believe that God's hand is in it, helping 
miraculously " His peculiar people." 

In face of Mormon prosperity, it is worthy of notice that 
Utah was settled on the Wakefieldian system, though Brigham 
knows nothing of Wakefield. Town population and country 
population grew up side by side in every valley, and the plough 
was not allowed to gain on the machine-saw and the shuttle. 

It is not only in water and verdure that Utah is naturally 
poor. On the mining-map of the States, the countries that lie 
around Utah — Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Montana — are one 
blaze of yellow, and blue, and red, coloured from end to end 
with the tints that are used to denote the existence of precious 
metals. Utah is blank at present — blank, the Mormons say, 
by nature ; Gentiles say, merely through the absence of survey; 
and they do their best to circumvent mother nature. Every 
fall the " strychnine " party raise the cry of gold discoveries in 
Utah, in the hope of bringing a rush of miners down to Salt 
Lake City, too late for them to get away again before the 
snows begin. The presence of some thousands of broad- 
brimmed rowdies in Salt Lake City, for a winter, would be the 
death of Mormonism, they believe. Within the last few days, 
I am told that prospecting parties have found " pay dirt " in 
City Canyon, which, however, they had first themselves care- 



CHAP. XVI.] WESTERN EDITORS. 117 

fully " salted " ■\\dth gold-dust. There is coal at the settlement 
at which we breakfasted on our way from Weber river to Salt 
Lake ; and Stenhouse tells us that the only difference between 
the Utah coal and that of Wales is, that the latter will burn, 
and the former worit ! 

Poor as Utah is by nature, clear though it be that whatever 
value the soil now possesses, represents only the loving labour 
bestowed upon it by the Saints, it is doubtful whether they are 
to continue to possess it, even though the remaining string of 
Vedette-\)OTn stories assert that Brigham " threatens hell " to the 
Gentiles who would expel him. 

The constant, teasing, wasp-like pertinacity of the Vedette has 
done some harm to liberty of thought throughout the world. 



ii8 GREATER BRITAIN. [Chap. xvii. 



CHAPTER XVJI. 

Utah. 

" When you are driven hence, where shall you go ?" 

" We take no thought for the morrow ; the Lord will guide 
His people," was my rebuke from Elder Stenhouse, delivered in 
the half-solemn, half-laughing manner characteristic of the 
Saints. " You say miracles are past and gone," he went on ; 
" but if God has ever interfered to protect a Church, he has 
interposed on our behalf. In 1857, when the whole army of 
the United States was let slip at us under Albert S. Johnson, 
we were given strength to turn them aside, and defeat them 
without a blow. The Lord permitted us to dictate our own 
terms of peace. Again, when the locusts came in such swarms 
as to blacken the whole valley, and fill the air with a living fog, 
God sent millions of strange new gulls, and these devoured the 
locusts, and saved us from destruction. The Lord will guide 
His people." 

Often as I discussed the future of Utah and the Church with 
Mormons, I could never get from them any answer but this ; 
they would never even express a belief, as will many Western 
Gentiles, that no attempt will be made to expel them from the 
country they now hold. They cannot help seeing how imme- 
diate is the danger : from the American press there comes a 
cry, " Let us have this polygamy put down ; its existence is a 
disgrace to England from which it springs, a shame to America 
in which it dwells, to the Federal Government whose laws it 
outrages and defies. How long will you continue to tolerate 
this retrogression from Christianity, this insult to civilization?" 
With the New Englanders, the question is political as well as 
theological, personal as well as political — political, mainly 



CHAP. XVII.] UTAH. 119 

because there is a great likeness between Mormon expressions 
of belief in the divine origin of polygamy and the Southern 
answers to the Abolitionists : " Abraham was a slave-owner, 
and father of the faithful;" " David, the best-loved of God was 
a polygamist " — " show us a biblical prohibition of slavery ;" 
" show us a denunciation of polygamy, and we'll believe you." 
It is this similarity of the defensive positions of Mormonism 
and slavery which has led to the present peril of the Salt Lake 
Church : the "New Englanders look on the Mormons, not only 
as heretics, but as friends to the slave-owners ; on the other 
hand, if you hear a man warmly praise the Mormons, you may 
set him down as a Southerner, or at the least a Democrat. 

Another reason for the hostility of New England is, that 
while the discredit of Mormonism falls upon America, the 
American people have but little share in its existence : a few of 
the leaders are New Englanders and New Yorkers, but of the 
rank and file, not one. In every ten immigrants, the mission- 
aries count upon finding that four come from England, two 
from Wales, one from the Scotch Lowlands, one from Sweden, 
one from Switzerland, and one from Prussia : from Catholic 
countries, none ; from all America, none. It is through this 
purely local and temporary association of ideas that we see the 
strange sight of a party of tolerant, large-hearted Churchmen 
eager to march their armies against a Church. 

If we put aside for a moment the question of the moral right 
to crush Mormonism in the name of truth, we find that it is, at 
all events, easy enough to do it. There is no difficulty in 
finding legal excuses for action — no danger in backing Federal 
legislation with military force. The legal point is clear enough 
— clear upon a double issue. Congress can legislate for the 
territories in social matters — has, in fact, already done so. 
Polygamy is at this moment punishable in Utah, but the law is, 
pending the completion of the railroad, not enforced. Without 
extraordinary action, its enforcement would be impossible, for 
Mormon juries will give no verdict antagonistic to their Church; 
but it is not only in this matter that the Mormons have been 
offenders. They have sinned also against the land-laws of 
America. The Church, Brigham, Kimball, all are landholders 
on a scale not contemplated by the "Homestead" laws — unless 



120 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xvii. 

to be forbidden ; doubly, therefore, are the Mormons at the 
mercy of the Federal Congress. There is a loop-hole open in 
the matter of polygamy — that adopted by the New York 
Communists when they chose each a woman to be his legal 
wife, and so put themselves without the reach of law. This 
method of escape, I have been assured by Mormon elders, is 
one that nothing could force them to adopt. Rather than in- 
directly destroy their Church by any such weak compliance, 
they would again renounce their homes, and make their painful 
way across the wilderness to some new Deseret. 

It is not likely that New England interference will hinge upon 
plurality. A " difficulty" can easily be made to arise upon the 
land question, and no breach of the principle of toleration will, 
on the surface at least, be visible. No surveys have been held 
in the territory since 1857, no lands within the territorial limits 
have been sold by the Federal land-office. Not only have the 
^ liMitations of thp,-' Homestead " and " Pre-emption " laws been 
disregarded, but SaU^ -I^ake City, with its palace, its theatre, and 
hotels, is built upon the public lands of the United States. On 
the other^ hand, Mexican titles are respected in Arizona and 
New Mexico ; and as Utah was Mexican soil when, before the 
treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Mormons settled on its wastes, 
it seems hard that their claims should not be equally respected. 
After all, the theory of Spanish authority was a ridiculous 
fiction. The Mormons were the first occupants of the country 
which now forms the territories of Utah and Colorado and the 
State of Nevada, and were thus annexed to the United States 
without being in the least degree consulted. It is true that they 
might be said to have occupied the country as American citizens, 
and so to have carried American sovereignty with them into 
the wilderness ; but this, again, is a European, not an American 
theory. American citizens are such, not as men born upon a 
certain soil, but as being citizens of a State of the Union, or 
an organized Territory; and though the Mormons may be said 
to have accepted their position as citizens of the Territory of 
Utah, still they did so on the understanding that it should 
continue a Mormon country, where Gentiles should at the most 
be barely tolerated. 

We need not go further into the mazes of public law, or of 



CHAP. XVII.] UTAH. 121 

ex post facto American enactments. The Mormons themselves 
admit that the letter of the law is against them ; but say that 
while it is claimed that Boston and Philadelphia may fitly 
legislate for the Mormons three thousand miles away, because 
Utah is a territory, not a State, men forget that it is Boston and 
Philadelphia themselves who force Utah to remain a Territory, 
although they admit the less populous Nebraska, Nevada, and 
Oregon to their rights as States. 

If, wholly excluding morals from the calculation, there can 
be no doubt upon the points of law, there can be as little 
upon the military question. Of the fifteen hundred miles of 
waterless tract or desert that we crossed, seven hundred have 
been annihilated,* and 1869 may see the railroad track in the 
streets of Salt Lake City. This not only settles the military 
question, but is meant to do so. When men lay four miles of a 
railroad in a day, and average two miles a ,^|^£--^¥^^- whole^v 
year, when a government bribes high ^)^u5;&Q:8 'sfeture^'sft'lj^^--^ 
startling a rate of progress, there is som«&jrg more than com- '^ 

merce or settlement in the wind. The 'Pacific railroad is not 
merely meant to be the shortest line from N£^M8]cif^l§^J375, 
Francisco ; it is meant to put down Mormonism. 

If the Federal Government decides to ^attack these peaceable 
citizens of a Territory that should long since^;^^e been a State^^\ f\ .v*^ 
they certainly will not fight, and they no less s^i-eljLvnll not' ^' 
disperse. Polynesia or Mexico is their goal, and in the Mar- 
quesas or in Sonora they may, perhaps, for a few years at least, 
be let alone, again to prove the forerunners of English civilization 
— planters of Saxon institutions and the English tongue ; once 
more to perform their mission, as they performed it in Missouri 
and in Utah. 

When we turn from the simple legal question, and the still 
more simple military one, to the moral point involved in the 
forcible suppression of plural marriage in one State by the 
might of all the others, we find the consideration of the matter 
confused by the apparent analogy between the so-called crusade 
against slavery and the proposed cmsade against polygamy. 
There is no real resemblance between the cases. In the 

* Now 1300 — Januaiy 1869. 



122 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xvii. 

strictest sense, there was no more a crusade against slavery 
than there is a crusade against snakes on the part of a man 
who strikes one that bit him. The purest Repubhcans have 
never pretended that the abohtion of slavery was the justifica- 
tion of the war. The South rose in rebellion, and in rising 
gave New England an opportunity for the destruction in 
America of an institution at variance with the republican form 
of government, and aggressive in its tendencies. So far is 
polygamy from being opposed in spirit to democracy, that it is 
impossible here, in Salt Lake City, not to see that it is the 
most levelling of all social institutions — Mormonism the most 
democratic of religions. A rich man in New York leaves his 
two or three sons large property, and founds a family ; a rich 
Mormon leaves his twenty or thirty sons each a miserable 
fraction of his money, and each son must trudge out into the 
world, and toil for himself. Brigham's sons — those of them 
who are not gratuitously employed in hard service for the 
Church in foreign parts — are cattle-drivers, small farmers, ranch- 
men. One of them was the only poorly clad boy I saw in Salt 
Lake City. A system of polygamy, in which all the wives, 
and consequently all the children, are equal before the law, is a 
powerful engine of democracy. 

The general moral question of whether Mormonism is to be 
put down by the sword, because the Latter-day Saints differ in 
certain social customs from other Christians, is one for the 
preacher and the casuist, not for a travelling observer of English- 
speaking countries as they are. Mormonism comes under my 
observation as the religious and social system of the most 
successful of all pioneers of English civilization. From this 
point of view it would be an immediate advantage to the world 
that they should be driven out once more into the wilderness, 
to found an England in Mexico, in Polynesia, or on Red River. 
It may be an immediate gain to civilization, but America her- 
self was founded by schismatics upon a basis of tolerance to 
all ; and there are still to be found Americans who think it 
would be the severest blow that has been dealt to liberty since 
the St. Bartholomew, were she to lend her enormous power to 
systematic persecution at the cannon's mouth. 

The question of where to draw the line is one of interest. 



CHAP. XVII.] UTAH. 123 

Great Britain draws it at black faces, and would hardly tolerate 
the existence among her white subjects in London of such a 
sect as that of the Maharajas of Bombay. " If you draw the 
line at black faces," say the Mormons, " why should you not 
let the Americans draw it at two thousand miles from 
Washington ?" 

The moral question cannot be dissociated from Mormon 
history. The Saints marched from Missouri and Illinois, into 
no man's land, intending there to live out of the reach of those 
who differed from them, as do the Russian dissenters trans- 
ported in past ages to the provinces of Taurida and Kherson ; 
It is by no fault of theirs, they say, that they are citizens of the 
United States. 

There is in the Far West a fast increasing party who would 
leave people to be polygynists, polyandrists, Free-lovers, Shakers, 
or monogamists, as they please ; who would place the social 
relations as they have placed religion — out of the reach of the 
law. I need hardly say that public opinion has such over- 
whelming force in America that it is probable that even under 
a system of perfect toleration by law, two forms of the family 
relation would never be found existing side by side. Polyga- 
mists would continue to migrate to Mormon-land, Free-lovers 
to New York, Shakers to New England. Some will find in this 
a reason for, and some a reason against, a change. In any case, 
a crusade against Mormonism will hardly draw sympathy from 
Nebraska, from Michigan, from Kansas. 

Many are found who say : " Leave Mormonism to itself, and 
it will die." The Pacific railroad alone, they think, will kill it. 
Those Americans who know Utah best are not of this opinion. 
Mormonism is no superstition of the past. There is huge 
vitality in the polygamic Church. Emerson once spoke to me 
of Unitarianism, Buddhism, and Mormonism as three religions 
which, right or wrong, are full of force. " The Mormons only 
need to be persecuted," said Elder Frederick to me, " to become 
as powerful as the Mohamedans." It is, indeed, more than 
doubtful, whether polygamy can endure side by side with Ameri- 
can monogamy — it is certain that Mormon priestly power and 
Mormon mysteries cannot in the long run withstand the presence 
of a large Gentile population ; but, if Mormon titles to land 



124 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xvn 

are respected, and if great mineral wealth is not found to exist 
in Utah, Mormonism will not be exposed to any much larger 
Gentile intrusion than it has to cope with now. Settlers who 
can go to California or to Colorado " pares " will hardly fix 
themselves in the Utah desert. The Mexican table-lands will be 
annexed before Gentile immigrants seriously trouble Brigham. 
Gold and Nev/ England are the most dreaded foes of Mormon- 
dom. Nothing can save polygamy if lodes and placers such as 
those of all the surrounding States are found in Utah ; nothing 
can save it if the New Englanders determine to put it down. 

Were Congress to enforce the Homestead laws in Utah, and 
provide for the presence of an overwhelming Gentile population, 
polygamy would not only die of itself, but drag Mormonism down 
in its fall. Brigham knows more completely than we can the 
necessity of isolation. He would not be likely to await the blow 
which increased Gentile immigration would deal his power. 

If New England decides to act, the table-lands of Mexico 
will see played once more the sad comedy of Utah. Again the 
Mormons will march into Mexican territory, again to wake 
some day, and find it American. Theirs, however, will once 
more be the pride of having proved the pioneers of that English 
civilization which is destined to overspread the temperate world. 
The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo annexed Utah to the United 
States, but Brigham Young annexed it to Anglo-Saxondom, 



125 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Nameless Alps. 

At the Post Office in Main Street, I gave Mr. Dixon a few last 
messages for home — he one to me for some Egyptian friends ; 
and, with a shake and a wave, we parted, to meet in London 
after between us completing the circuit of the globe. 

This time again I was not alone : an Irish miner from 
Montana, with a bottle of whisky, a revolver and pick, shared 
the back seat with the mail-bags. Before we had forded the 
Jordan, he had sung " The Wearing of the Green," and told me 
the day and the hour at which the Republic was to be pro- 
claimed at his native village in Galway. Like a true Irishman 
of the South or West, he was happy only when he could be 
generous ; and so much joy did he show when I discovered 
that the Cork had slipped from my flask, and left me dependent 
on him for my escape from the alkaline poison, that I half 
believed he had drawn it himself when we stopped to change 
horses for mules. Certain it is that he pressed his whisky so 
fast upon me and the various drivers, that the day we most 
needed its aid there was none, and the bottle itself had ended 
its career by serving as a target for a trial of breech-loading 
pistols. 

At the sixth ranch from the city, which stands on the shores 
of the lake, and close to the foot of the mountains, we found 
Porter Rockwell, accredited chief of the Danites, the "Avenging 
Angels" of Utah, and leader, it is said, of the "White Indians" 
at the Mountain Meadows Massacre. 

Since 1840, there has been no name of greater terror in the 
West than Rockwell's ; but in i860 his death was reported in 
England, and the career of the great Brother of Gideon was ended, 



126 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xviii. 

as we thought. I was told in Salt Lake City that he was still 
alive and well, and his portrait was among those that I got 
from Mr. Ottinger j but I am not convinced that the man I saw, 
and whose picture I possess, was in fact the Porter Rockwell 
who murdered Stephenson in 1842. It may be convenient to 
have two or three men to pass by the one name ; and I suspect 
that this is so in the Rockwell case. 

Under the name of Porter Rockwell some man (or men) has 
been the terror of Mississippi Valley, of Plains, and Plateau, for 
thirty years. In 1842, Joe Smith prophesied the death of 
Governor Boggs, of Missouri, within six months : within that 
time he was shot — rumour said, by Rockwell. When the Danite 
was publicly charged with having done the deed for fifty dollars 
and a wagon team, he swore he'd shoot any man who said he 
shot Boggs for gam; "but if I am charged for shooting him, 
they'll have to prove it " — words that looked like guilt. In 1842, 
Stephenson died by the same hand, it is believed. Rockwell 
was known to be the working chief of the band organised in 
1838 to defend the First Presidency by any means whatever, 
fair or foul, known at various times as the " Big Fan " that 
should winnow the chaff from the wheat ; the " Daughter of 
Zion," the " Destructives," the " Flying Angels," the " Brother 
of Gideon," the "Destroying Angels." " Arise and thresh, O 
daughter of Zion, for I will make thy horn iron, and will make 
thy hoofs brass ; and thou shalt beat in pieces many people ; 
and I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord, and their sub- 
stance unto the lords of the whole earth " — this was the motto 
of the band. 

Little was heard of the Danites from the time that the Mor- 
mons were driven from Illinois and Missouri until 1852, when 
murder after murder, massacre after massacre, occurred in the 
Grand Plateau. Bands of immigrants, of settlers on their road 
to California, parties of United States' officers, and escaping 
Mormons, were attacked by " Indians," and found scalped by 
the next whites who came upon their trail. It was rumoured 
in the Eastern States that the red men were Mormons in dis- 
guise, following the tactics of the Anti-Renters of New York, 
In the case of Almon Babbitt, the "Indians" were proved to 
have been white. 




PORTER ROCKWELL. 



CHAP. XVIII.] NAM£LESS ALPS. 129 

The atrocities culminated in the Mountain Meadows Mas- 
sacre in 1857, when hundreds of men, women, and children 
were murdered by men armed and clothed as Indians, but 
sworn to by some who escaped as being whites. Porter Rock- 
well has had the infamy of this tremendous slaughter piled on 
to the huge mass of his earlier deeds of blood — whether rightly 
or wrongly, who shall say ? The man that I saw was the man 
that Captain ■ Burton saw in i860. His death was solemnly 
recorded in the autumn of that year, yet of the identity of the 
person I saw with the person described by Captain Burton 
there can be no question. The bald, frowning forehead, the 
sinister smile, the long grizzly curls falling upon the back, the 
red cheek, the coal beard, the grey eye, are not to be mistaken. 
Rockwell or not, he is a man capable of any deed. T had his 
photograph in my pocket, and wanted to get him to sign it ; 
but when, in awe of his glittering bowie and of his fame, I 
asked, by way of caution, the ranchman — a new-come Paddy 
— whether Rockwell could write, the fellow told me with many 
an oath that " the boss " was as innocent of letters as a babe. 
" As for writin'," he said, " cuss me if he's on it. You bet he's 
not — you bet." 

Not far beyond Rockwell's, we drove close to the bench- 
land ; and I was able to stop for a moment and examine the 
rocks. From the verandah of the Mormon poet Naisbitt's 
house in Salt Lake City, I had remarked a double line of 
terrace running on one even level round the whole of the great 
valley to the south, cut by nature along the base alike of the 
Oquirrh and the Wasatch. 

I had thought it possible that the terrace was the result of 
the varying hardness of the strata ; but, near Black Rock, on 
the overland track, I discovered that where the terrace lines 
have crossed the mountain precipices, they are continued 
merely by deep stains upon the rocks. The inference is that 
within extremely recent, if not historic times, the water has 
stood at these levels from two to three hundred feet above the 
present Great Salt Lake City, itself 4500 feet above the sea. 
Three days' journey farther west, on the Reese's River Range, 
I detected similar stains. Was the whole basin of the Rocky 
Mountains — here more than a thousand miles across — once 

K 



130 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xviii. 

filled with a huge sea, of which the two Sierras were the shores, 
and the Wasatch, Goshoot, Waroja, Toi Abbe, Humboldt, 
Washoe, and a hundred other ranges, the rocks and isles ? 
The Great Salt Lake is but the largest of many such. I saw 
one on Mirage Plains that is Salter than its greater fellow. 
Carson Sink is evidently the bed of a smaller bitter lake ; and 
there are salt pools in dozens scattered through Ruby and 
Smoky valleys. The Great Salt Lake itself is sinking year by 
year, and the sage-brush is gaining upon the alkali desert 
throughout the Grand Plateau. All these signs point to the 
rapid drying-up of a great sea, owing to an alteration of cli- 
matic conditions. 

In the Odd Fellows' Library at San Francisco I found a 
map of North America, signed "John Harris, A.M.," and dated 
" 1605," which shows a great lake in the country now com- 
prised in the territories of Utah and Dacotah, with a width of 
fifteen degrees, and named "Thongo" or "Thoya." It is not 
likely that this inland sea is a mere exaggeration of the present 
Great Salt Lake, because the views of that sheet of water are 
everywhere limited by islands in such a way as to give to the 
eye the effect of exceeding narrowness. The Jesuit Fathers, 
and other Spanish travellers from California, may have looked 
from the Utah mountains on the dwindhng remnant of a great 
inland sea. 

On we jogged and jolted, till we lost sight of the American 
dead sea and of its lovely valley, and got into a canyon floored 
with huge boulders and slabs of roughened rock, where I ex- 
pected each minute to undergo the fate of that Indian traveller 
who received such a jolt that he bit off the tip of his own 
tongue ; or of Horace Greeley, whose head was bumped, it is 
said, through the roof of his conveyance. Here, as upon the 
eastern side the Wasatch, the track was marked by never- 
ending lines of skeletons of mules and oxen. 

On the first evening from Salt Lake, we escaped once more 
from man at Stockton, a Gentile mining settlement in Rush 
Valley, too small to be called a village, though possessed of a 
municipality, and claiming the title of "city." By night we 
crossed by Reynolds' Pass the Parolom or Cedar Range, in a 
two-horse "jerky," to which we had been shifted for speed and 



CHAP, xvm.] NAMFLESS ALPS. 131 

safety. Upon the heights the frost was bitter ; and when we 
stopped at 3 a.m. for " supper," in which breakfast was com- 
bined, we crawled into the stable like flies in autumn, half 
killed by the sudden chill. My miner spoke but once all night. 
" It's right cold," he said; but fifty times at least he sang " The 
Wearing of the Green." It was his only tune. 

Soon after light we passed the spot where Captain Gunnison, 
of the Federal Engineers, who had been in 1853 the first ex- 
plorer of the Smoky Hill route, was killed " by the Ute In- 
dians." Gunnison was an old enemy of the Mormons, and the 
spot is ominously near to Rockwell's home. Here we came 
out once more into the alkali, and our troubles from dust 
began. For hours we were in a desert white as snow ; but for 
reward we gained a glorious view of the Goshoot Range, which 
we crossed by night, climbing silently on foot for hours in the 
moonlight. The walking saved us from the cold. 

The third day — a Sunday morning — we were at the foot of the 
Waroja Mountains, with Egan Canyon for our pass, hewn by 
nature through the living rock. You dare swear you see the 
chisel-marks upon the stone. A gold-mill had years ago been 
erected here, and failed. The heavy machinery was lost upon 
the road ; but the four stone walls contained between them the 
wreck of the lighter "plant." 

As we jolted and journeyed on across the succeeding plain, 
we spied in the far distance a group of black dots upon the 
alkali. Man seems very small in the infinite expanse of the 
Grand Plateau — the roof, as it were, of the world. At the end 
of an hour we were upon them — a company of " overlanders " 
" tracking " across the continent with mules. First came two 
mounted men, well-armed with Deringers in the belt, and 
Ballard breech-loaders on the thigh, prepared for ambush — 
ready for action against elk or red-skin. About fifty yards 
behind these scowling fellows came the main band of bearded, 
red-shirted diggers, in huge boots and felt hats, each man riding 
one mule, and driving another laden with packs and buckets. 
As we came up, the main body halted, and an interchange of 
comphments began. "Say, mister, thet's a slim horse of yourn." 
" Guess not — guess he's all sorts of a horse, he air. And how 
far might it be to the State of Varmount ?" " Wall, guess the 

K 2 



132 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xviii. 

boys down to hum will be kinder joyed to see us, howsomever 
that may be." Just at this moment a rattlesnake was spied, 
and every revolver discharged with a shout, all hailing the suc- 
cessful shot with a "Bully for you ; thet hit him whar he lives." 
And on, without more ado, they went. 

Even the roughest of these overlanders has in him some- 
thing more than roughness. As far as appearance goes, every 
woman of the Far West is a duchess, each man a Coriolanus. 
The royal gait, the imperial glance and frown, belong to every 
ranchman in Nevada. Every fellow that you meet upon the 
track near Stockton or Austin City, walks as though he were 
defying lightning, yet this without silly strut or Braggadocio. 
Nothing can be more complete than the ranchman's self-com- 
mand, save in the one point of oaths ; the strongest, freshest, 
however, of their moral features is a grand enthusiasm, amount- 
ing sometimes to insanity. As for their oaths, they tell you it 
is nothing unless the air is " blue with cusses." At one of the 
ranches where there was a woman, she said quietly to me, in 
the middle of an awful burst of swearing, " Guess Bill swears 
steep ;" to which I replied, " Guess so " — the only allusion I 
ever heard or hazarded to Western swearing. 

Leaving to our north a snowy range — nameless here, but 
marked on European maps as the East Humboldt — we 
reached the foot of the Ruby Valley Mountains on the Sunday 
afternoon in glowing sunshine, and crossed them in a snow- 
storm. In the night we journeyed up and down the Diamond 
or Quartz Range, and morning found us at the foot of the Pond 
Chain. At the ranch — where, in the absence of elk, we ate 
" bacon," and dreamt we breakfasted — I chatted with an agent 
of the Mail Company on the position of the ranchmen, divisible, 
as he told me, into " cooks and hostlers." The cooks, my ex- 
perience had taught me, were the aptest scholars, the greatest 
politicians ; the hostlers, men of war and completest masters of 
the art of Western swearing. The cooks had a New-England 
cut ; the hostlers, like Southerners, wore their hair all down 
their backs. I begged an explanation of the reason for the 
marked distinction. " They are picked," he said, " from 
different classes. When a boy comes to me and asks for some- 
thing to do, I give him a look, and see what kind of stuff he's 



c:iAP. XVIII.] XAMELESS ALPS. 133 

made of. If he's a gay duck out for a six-weeks' spree, I send 
him down here, or to Bitter Wells ; but if he's a clerk or a 
poet, or any such sorter fool as that, why then I set him cook- 
ing ; and plaguy good cooks they make, as you must find." 

The drivers on this portion of the route are as odd fellows 
as are the ranchmen. AVearing huge jack-boots, flannel shirts 
tucked into their trousers, but no coat or vest, and hats with 
enormous brims, they have their hair long, and their beards un- 
trimmed. Their oaths, I need hardly say, are fearful. At 
night they wrap themselves in an enormous cloak, drink as 
much whisky as their passengers can spare them, crack their 
whips and yell strange yells. They are quarrelsome snd over- 
bearing, honest probably, but eccentric in their ways of show- 
ing it. They belong chiefly to the mixed Irish and German 
race, and have all been in Australia during the gold rush, and 
in California before deep sinking replaced the surface diggings. 
They will tell you how they often washed out and gambled 
away a thousand ounces in a month, living like Roman empe- 
rors, then started in digging-life again upon the charity of their 
wealthier friends. They hate men dressed in " biled shirts " or 
in " store clothes," and show their aversion in strange ways. I 
had no objection myself to build fires and fetch wood ; but I 
drew the line at going into the sage-brush to catch the mules, 
that not being a business which I felt competent to undertake. 
The season was advanced, the snows had not yet reached the 
valleys, which were parched by the drought of all the summer, 
feed for the mules was scarce, and they wandered a long way. 
Time after time we would drive into a station, the driver say- 
ing, with strange oaths, " Guess them mules is clared out from 
this here ranch ; guess they is into this sage-brush ; " and it 
would be an hour before the mules would be discovered feed- 
ing in some forgotten valley. Meanwhile the miner and myself 
would have revolver practice at the skeletons and telegraph- 
posts when sage fowl failed us, and rattlesnakes grew scarce. 

After all, it is easy to speak of the eccentricities of dress and 
manner displayed by Western men, but Eastern men and 
Europeans upon the Plateau are not the prim creatures of 
Fifth Avenue or Pall Mall. From San Francisco I sent home 
an excellent photograph of myself in the clothes in which I 



134 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, sviii. 

had crossed the Plateau, those being the only ones I had to 
wear till my baggage came round from Panama. The result 
was, that my oldest friends failed to recognise the portrait. At 
the foot I had written, " A Border Ruffian : " they believed not 
the likeness, but the legend. 

The difficulties of dress upon these mountain ranges are 
great indeed. To sit one night exposed to keen frost and 
biting wind, and the next day to toil for hours up a mountain- 
side, beneath a blazing sun, are very opposite conditions. I 
found my dress no bad one. At night I wore a Canadian fox- 
fur cap, Mormon 'coon-skin gloves, two coats, and the whole of 
my light silk shirts. By day I took off the coats, the gloves, 
and cap, and walked in my shirts, adding but a Panama hat to 
my " fit-out." 

As we began the ascent of the Pond River Range, we caught 
up a bullock-train, which there was not room to pass. The 
miner and myself turned out from the jerky, and for hours 
climbed alongside the wagons. I was struck by the freemasonry 
of this mountain travel : Bryant, the miner, had come to the 
end of his " Solace," as the most famed chewing-tobacco in 
these parts is called. Going up to the nearest teamster, he 
asked for some, and was at once presented with a huge cake — 
fit for the consumption of a Channel pilot. 

The climb was long enough to give me a deep insight into 
the inner mysteries of bullock-driving. Each of the great two- 
storied Californian wagons was drawn by twelve stout oxen; 
still, the pace was not a mile an hour, accomplished, as it 
seemed to me, not so much by the aid as in spite of tremen- 
dous flogging. Each teamster carried a short-handled whip 
with a twelve-foot leathern lash, which was v/ielded with two 
hands, and, after many a whirl, brought down along the whole 
length of the back of each bullock of the team in turn, the 
stroke being accompanied by a shout of the bullock's name, 
and followed, as it was preceded, by a string of the most ex- 
plosive oaths. The favourite names for bullocks were those of 
noted public characters and of Mormon elders, and cries were 
frequent of " Ho, Brigham ! " " Ho, Joseph ! " " Ho, Grant ! "— 
the blow falling with the accented syllable. The London 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would find at 



CHAP. XVIII.] NAMELESS ALPS. 135 

Pond River ranch an excellent opening for a mission. The 
appointed officer should be supplied with two Deringers and a 
well-filled whisky-barrel. 

Through a gap in the mountain crest we sighted the West 
Humboldt Range, across an open country dotted here and 
there with stunted cedar, and, crossing Smoky Valley, we 
plunged into a deep pass in the Toi Abbe Range, and reached 
Austin — a mining town of importance, rising two years old — in 
the afternoon of the fourth day from Salt Lake City. 

After dining at an Italian digger's restaurant with an amount 
of luxury that recalled our feasts at Salt Lake City, I started 
on a stroll, in which I was stopped at once by a shout from an 
open bar-room of "Say! mister!" Pulling up sharply, I was 
surrounded by an eager crowd, asking from all sides the one 
question: "Might you be Professor Muller?" Although 
flattered to find that I looked less disreputable and ruffianly 
than I felt, I nevertheless explained as best I could that I was 
no professor — only to be assured that if I was any professor at 
all, Muller or other, I should do just as well : a mule was ready 
for me to ride to the mine, and "Jess kinder fix us up about 
this new lode." If my new-found friends had not carried an 
overwhelming force of pistols, I might have gone to the mine 
as Professor Muller, and given my opinion for what it was worth ; 
as it was, I escaped only by " liquoring up " over the error. 
Cases of mistaken identity are not always so pleasant in Austin. 
They told me that, a few weeks before, a man riding down the 
street heard a shot, saw his hat fall into the mud, and, picking 
it up, found a small round hole on each side. Looking up, he 
saw a tall miner, revolver smoking in hand, who smiled grimly, 
and said : " Guess thet's my muel." Having politely explained 
when and where the mule was bought, the miner professed him- 
self satisfied with a " Guess I was wrong — let's liquor." 

In the course of my walk through Austin, I came upon a 
row of neat huts, each with a board on which was painted, 
"Sam Sing, washing and ironing," or "Mangling by Ah Low." 
A few paces farther on was a shop painted red, but adorned 
with cabalistic scrawls in black ink ; and farther still was a tiny 
joss-house. Yellow men in spotless clothes of dark-green and 
blue, were busy at buying and selling, at cooking, at washing. 



136 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xviii. 

Some, at a short trot, were carrying burthens at the ends of 
a long bamboo pole. All were quiet, quick, orderly, and clean. 
I had at last come thoroughly among the Chinese people, not 
to lose sight of them again till I left Geelong, or even Suez. 

Returning to the room where I had dined, I parted with Pat 
Bryant, quitting him, in Western fashion, after a good " trade " 
or " swop." He had taken a fancy to the bigger of my two 
revolvers. He was going to breed cattle in Oregon, he told 
me, and thought it might be useful for shooting his wildest 
beasts by riding in the Indian manner, side by side with them, 
and shooting at the heart. I answered by guessing that I " was 
on the sell ;" and traded the weapon against one of his that 
matched my smaller tool. When I reached Virginia City, I in- 
quired prices, and was almost disappointed to find that I had 
not been cheated in the " trade." 

A few minutes after leaving the " hotel " at Austin, and call- 
ing at the post-office for the mails, I again found myself in the 
desert — indeed, Austin itself can hardly be styled oasis : it may 
have gold, but it has no green thing within its limits. It is in 
canyons and on plains like these, with the skeletons of oxen 
every few yards along the track, that one comes to comprehend 
the full significance of the terrible entry in the army route- 
books — " No grass ; no water." 

Descending a succession of tremendous "grades," as in- 
clines upon roads and railroads are called out West, we came 
on to the lava-covered plain of Reese's River Valley, a wall 
of snowy mountain rising grandly in our front. Close to the 
stream were a ranch or two, and a double camp, of miners and 
of a company of Federal troops. The diggers were playing 
with their glistening knives as diggers only can ; the soldiers — 
their huge sombreros worn loosely on one side — were lounging 
idly in the sun. 

Within an hour, we were again in snow and ice upon the 
summit of another nameless range. 

This evening, after five sleepless nights, I felt most terribly 
the peculiar form of fatigue that we had experienced after six 
days and nights upon the Plains. Again the brain seemed 
divided into two parts, thinking independently, and one side 
putting questions while the other answered them ; but this 



CHAP. XVIII.] NAMELESS ALPS. 137 

time there was also a sort of half insanity, a not altogether 
disagreeable wandering of the mind, a replacing of the actual 
by an imagined ideal scene. 

On and on we journeyed, avoiding the Shoshone and West 
Humboldt mountains, but picking our way along the most 
fearful ledges that it has been my fate to cross, and traversing 
from end to end the dreadful Mirage Plains. At nightfall we 
sighted Mount Davidson and the Washoe Range, and at 3 a.m. 
I was in bed once more — in Virginia City. 



138 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap, xix. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Virginia City. 

" Guess the Governor's consid'rable skeert." 

" You bet he's mad." 

My sitting down to breakfast at the same small table seemed 
to end the talk ; but I had not been out West for nothing, so 
explaining that I Avas only four hours in Virginia City, I 
inquired what had occurred to fill the Governor of Nevada 
with vexation and alarm. 

" D'you tell now ! only four hours in this great young city. 
Wall, guess it's a bully business. You see, some time back the 
Governor pardoned a road agent after the citizens had voted 
him a rope. Yes, sij ! But that ain't all : yesterday, cuss me 
if he didn't refuse ter pardon one of the boys who had jess 
shot another in play like. Guess he thinks hisself some pump- 
kins." I duly expressed my horror, and my informant went 
on : " Wall, guess the citizens paid him off purty slick. They 
jess sent him a short thick bit of rope with a label, ' For his 
Excellency.' You bet ef he ain't mad — ^you bet ! Pass us 
those molasses, mister." 

I was not disappointed, to see Virginia City and Carson, 
since I first heard their fame in New York, had been with me 
a passion, but the deed thus told me in the dining-room of the 
" Empire " Hotel was worthy a place in the annals of 
"Washoe." Under its former name, the chief town of Nevada 
was ranked not only the highest, but the " cussedest " town in 
the States, its citizens expecting a " dead man for breakfast " 
every day, and its streets ranging from seven to eight thousand 
feet above the sea. Its twofold fame is leaving it : the Colo- 
radan villages of North Empire and Black Hawk are nine or 



CHAP. XIX.] VIRGINIA CITY. 139 

ten thousand feet above sea level, and Austin, and Virginia 
City in Montana beat it in playful pistolling and vice. Never- 
theless, in the point of " pure cussedness " old Washoe still 
stands well, as my first introduction to its ways will show. All 
the talk of Nevada reformation applies only to the surface 
signs : when a miner tells you that Washoe is turning pious, 
and that he intends shortly to " vamose," he means that, unlike 
Austin, which is still in its first stage of mule-stealing and 
monte, Virginia City has passed through the second period — 
that of " vigilance committees " and "historic trees" — and is 
entering the third, the stage of churches and " city ofticers," 
or police. 

The population is still a shifting one. A by-law of the 
municipality tells us that the "permanent population" consists 
of those who reside more than a month within the city. At 
this moment the miners are pouring into Washoe from north 
and south and east, from Montana, from Arizona, and from 
Utah, coming to the gaieties of the largest mining city to spend 
their money during the fierce short winter. When I saw Vir- 
ginia City, it was worse than Austin. 

Every other house is a restaurant, a drinking shop, a gaming 
hell, or worse. With no one to make beds, to mend clothes, 
to cook food — with no house, no home — men are almost 
certain to drink and gamble. The Washoe bar-rooms are the 
most brilliant in the States : As we drove in from Austin at 
3 A.M., there was blaze enough for us to see from the frozen 
street the portraits of Lola Montez, Ada Menken, Heenan, 
and the other Cahfornian celebrities with which the bar-rooms 
were adorned. 

Although " petticoats," even Chinese, are scarce, dancing 
was going on in every house ; but there is a rule in miners' 
balls that prevents all difficulties arising from an over supply of 
men : every one who has a patch on the rear portion of his 
breeches does duty for a lady in the dance, and as gentlemen 
are forced by the custom of the place to treat their partners at 
the bar, patches are popular. 

Up to eleven in the morning hardly a man was to be seen : 
a community that sits up all night, begins its work in the after- 
noon. For hours I had the blazing hills, called streets, to 



i4o GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xix. 

myself for meditating ground ; but it did not need hours to 
bring me to think that a Vermonter's description of the dimate 
of the mountains was not a bad one when he said : " You rise 
at eight, and shiver in your cloak till nine, when you lay it 
aside, and walk freely in your woollens. At twelve you come 
in for your gauze coat and your Panama ; at two you are in 
a hammock cursing the heat, but at four you venture out 
again, and by five are in your v/oollens. At six you begin to 
shake with cold, and shiver on till bedtime, which you make 
darned early." Even at this great height, the thermometer in 
the afternoon touches 80° Fahr. in the shade, while from sunset 
to sunrise there is a bitter frost. So it is throughout the 
Plateau. When morning after morning we reached a ranch, 
and rushed out of the freezing ambulance through the still 
colder route air to the fragrant cedar fire, there to roll with 
pain at the thawing of our joints, it was hard to bear it in mind 
that by eight o'clock v/e should be shutting out the sun, and by 
noon melting even in the deepest shade. 

As I sat at dinner in a miners' restaurant, my opposite neigh- 
bour, finding that I was not long from England, informed me 
he was " the independent editor of the Nevada Unio7i Gazette^'' 
and went on to ask : " And how might you have left literatooral 
pursoots ? How air Tennyson and Thomas T. Carlyle ?" I 
assured him that to the best of my belief they were fairly well, 
to which his reply was : " Guess them ther men ken sling ink, 
they ken." When we parted, he gave me a copy of his paper, 
in which I found that he called a rival editor " a walking 
whisky-bottle " and " a Fenian imp." The latter phrase 
reminded me that, of the two or three dozen American editors 
that I had met, this New England er was the first who was 
"native born." Stenhouse, in Salt Lake City, is an English- 
man, so is Stanton of Denver, and the whole of the remainder 
of the band were Irishmen. As for the earHer assertion in the 
"editorial," it was not a wild one, seeing that Virginia City 
has five hundred whisky-shops for a population of ten thou- 
sand. Artemus Ward said of Virginia City, in a farewell speech 
to the inhabitants that should have been published in his 
works : " I never, gentlemen, was in a city where I was treated 
so well, nor, I will add, so often'' Through every open door 



CHAP. XIX.] VIRGINIA CITF. 141 

the diggers can be seen tossing the whisky down their throats 
with a scowl of resolve, as though they were committing 
suicide — which, indeed, except in the point of speed, is pro- 
bably the case. 

The [/nion Gazette was not the only paper that I had given 
me to read that morning. Not a bridge over a " crick," not 
even a blacked pair of boots, made me so thoroughly aware 
that I had in .a measure returned to civilization as did the gift 
of a California Alta containing a report of a debate in the 
British Parliament upon the Bank Charter Act. The speeches 
were appropriate to my feelings : I had just returned not only 
to civilization, but to the European inconveniences of gold and 
silver money. In Utah, gold and greenbacks circulate indiffe- 
rently, with a double set of prices always marked and asked ; 
in Nevada and California, greenbacks are as invisible as gold 
in New York or Kansas. Nothing can persuade the Califor- 
nians that the adoption by the Eastern States of an inconvertible 
paper system is anything but the result of a conspiracy against 
the Pacific States — one in which they at least are determined 
to have no share. Strongly Unionist in feeling as were Cali- 
fornia, Oregon, and Nevada during the rebellion, to have forced 
greenbacks upon them would have been almost more than their 
loyalty would have borne. In the severest taxation they were 
prepared to acquiesce ; but paper-money they believe to be 
downright robbery, and the invention of the devil. 

To me the reaching gold once more was far from pleasant, 
for the advantages of paper-money to the traveller are enormous : 
it is light, it wears no holes in your pockets, it reveals its pre- 
sence by no untimely clinking ; when you jump from a coach, 
every thief within a mile is not at once aware that you have ten 
dollars in your right-hand pocket. The Nevadans say that 
forgeries are so common, that their neighbours in Colorado 
have been forced to agree that any decent imitation shall be 
taken as good, it being too difficult to examine into each case. 
For my part, though in rapid travel a good deal of paper passed 
through my hands in change, my only loss by forgery was one 
half-dollar note ; my loss by wear and tear, the same. 

In spite of the gold currency, prices are higher in Nevada 
than in Denver. A shave is half a dollar — gold ; in Washoe, 



142 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xix. 

and in Atchison, but a paper quarter. A boot-blacking is fifty- 
cents in gold, instead of ten cents paper, as in Chicago or St. 
Louis. 

During the war, when fluctuations in the value of the paper 
were great and sudden, prices changed from day to day. Hotel 
proprietors in the West received their guests at breakfast, it is 

said, with "Glorious news; we've whipped at . Gold's i8o; 

board's down half-a-dollar." While 1 was in the country, gold 
fluctuated between 140 and 163, but prices remained unaltered. 

Paper money is of some use to a young country in making 
the rate of wages appear enormous, and so attracting immigra- 
tion. If a Cork bog-trotter is told that he can get two dollars 
a day for his work in America, but only one in Canada, no 
economic considerations interfere to prevent him rushing to the 
nominally higher rate. Whether the working men of America 
have been gainers by the inflation of the currency, or the re- 
verse, it is hard to say. It has been stated in the Senate that 
wages have risen sixty per cent, and prices ninety per cent. ; 
but " prices " is a term of great width. The men themselves 
believe that they have not been losers, and no argument can be 
so strong as that 

My first afternoon upon Mount Davidson I spent under- 
ground in the Gould and Curry mine, the wealthiest and largest 
of those that have tapped the famous Comstock lode. In this 
single vein of silver lies the prosperity not only of the city, but 
of Nevada State ; its discovery will have hastened the comple- 
tion of the overland railway itself by several years. It is owing 
to the enormous yield of this one lode that the United States 
now stands second only to Mexico as a silver-producing land. 
In one year Nevada has given the world as much silver as there 
came from the mines of all Peru. 

The rise of Nevada has been sudden. I was shown in Vir- 
ginia City a building block of land that rents for ten times what 
it cost four years ago. Nothing short of solid silver by the yard 
would have brought twenty thousand men to live upon the 
summit of Mount Davidson. It is easy here to understand the 
mad rush and madder speculation that took place at the time 
of the discovery. Every valley in the Washoe Range was 
'* prospected," and pronounced paved with silver ; every moun- 



CHAP. XIX.] VIRGINIA CITY. 143 

tain was a solid mass. " Cities " were laid out, and town lots 
sold, wherever room was afforded by a flat piece of ground. 
The publication of the Californian newspapers was suspended, 
as writers, editors, proprietors, and devils, all had gone with the 
rush. San Francisco went clean mad, and London and Paris 
were not far behind. Of the hundred " cities " founded, but 
one was built j of the thousand claims registered, but a hundred 
were takers up and worked ; of the companies formed, but half-a- 
dozen ever paid a dividend, except that obtained from the sale 
of their plant. The silver of which the whole base of Mount 
Davidson is composed has not been traced in the surrounding 
hills, though they are covered with a forest of posts, marking 
the limits of forgotten " claims : " 

"James Thompson, 130 feet N.E. by N." 

*' Ezra Williams, 130 feet due E. ; " 
and so for nailes. The Gould and Curry Company, on the 
other hand, is said to have once paid a larger half-yearly divi- 
dend than the sum of the original capital, and its shares have 
been quoted at 1000 per cent. Such are the differences of a 
hundred yards. 

One of the oddities of mining life is, that the gold-diggers 
profess a sublime contempt for silver-miners and their trade. 
A Coloradan going West was asked in Nevada if in his country 
they could beat the Comstock lode. " Dear, no ! " he said. 
" The boys with us are plaguy discouraged jess at present." 
The Nevadans were do^vn upon the word. " Discouraged, air 
they ? " " Why, yes ! They've jess found they've got ter dig 
through three feet of solid silver 'fore ever they come ter gold." 

Some of the Nevada companies have curious titles. " The 
Union Lumber Association " is not bad ; but " The Segi'egated 
Belcher Mining Enterprise of Gold Hill District, Storey County, 
Nevada State," is far before it as an advertising name. 

In a real "coach" at last — a coach with windows and a roof — 
drawn by six " mustangs," we dashed down Mount Davidson 
upon a real road, engineered with grades and bridges — the first 
since Junction City. Through the Devil's Gate we burst out 
upon a chaotic country. For a hundred miles the eye ranged 
over humps and bumps of every size, from stones to mountains, 
but no level ground, no field, no house, no tree, no green. Not 



144 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xix. 

even the Sahara so thoroughly deserves the name of "desert." 
In Egypt there is the oasis, in Arabia here and there a date and 
a sweet-water well ; here there is nothing, not even earth. The 
ground is soda, and the water and air are full of salt. 

This road is notorious for the depredations of the "road 
agents," as white highwaymen are politely called, red or yellow 
robbers being still " darned thieves." At Desert Wells, the 
coach had been robbed, a week before I passed, by men who 
had first tied up the ranchmen, and taken their places to receive 
the driver and passengers when they arrived. The prime object 
with the robbers is the treasury box of " dust," but they generally 
" go through " the passengers, by way of pastime, after their 
more regular work is done. As to firing, they have a rule — a 
simple one. If a passenger shoots, every man is killed. It 
need not be said that the armed driver and armed guard never 
shoot ; they know their business far too well. 

Hard by Desert Station we came on hot and cold springs in 
close conjunction, flowing almost from the same " sink-hole " — 
the original twofold springs, I hinted to our driver, that Poseidon 
planted in the Atlantic isle. He said that " some one of that 
name " had a ranch near Carson, so I " concluded " to drop 
Poseidon, lest I should say something that might offend. 

From Desert Wells the alkali grew worse and worse, but 
began to be alleviated at the ranches by irrigation of the throat 
with delicious Californian wine. The plain was strewn with 
erratic boulders, and here and there I noticed sharp sand-cones, 
like those of the Elk Mountain country in Utah. 

At last we dashed into the " city " named after the notorious 
Kit Carson, of which an old inhabitant has lately said, "This 
here city is growing plaguy mean : there was only one man 
shot all yesterday." There was what is here styled an " alter- 
cation " a day or two ago. The sheriff tried to arrest a man in 
broad dayhght in the single street which Carson boasts. The 
result was that each fired several shots at the other, and that 
both were badly hurt. 

The half-deserted mining village and wholly ruined Mormon 
settlement stand grimly on the bare rock, surrounded by weird- 
looking depressions of the earth, the far-famed " sinks," the very 
bottom of the Plateau, and goal of all the Plateau streams — in 



CHAP. XIX.] VIRGINIA CITY. 145 

summer dry, and spread with sheets of salt ; in winter filled with 
brine. The Sierra Nevada rises like a wall from the salt pools, 
with a fringe of giant leafless trees hanging stiffly from its 
heights — my first forest since I left the Missouri bottoms. The 
trees made me feel that I was really across the Continent, within 
reach at least of the fogs of the Pacific — on " the other side ; " 
that there was still rough cold work to be done was clear from 
the great snow-fields that showed through the pines with that 
threatening blackness that the purest of snows wear in the 
evening when they face the east. 

As I gazed upon the tremendous battlements of the Sierra, I 
not only ceased to marvel that for three hundred years trafflc 
had gone round by Panama rather than through these frightful 
obstacles, but even wondered that they should be surmounted 
now. In this hideous valley it was that the Californian immi- 
grants wintered in 1848, and killed their Indian guides for food. 
For three months more the strongest of them lived upon the 
bodies of those who died, incapable in their weakness of making 
good their foothold upon the slippery snows of the Sierra. 
After a while, some were cannibals by choice ; but the story is 
not one that can be told. 

Galloping up the gentle grades of Johnson's Pass, we began 
the ascent of the last of fifteen great mountain ranges crossed or 
flanked since I had left Great Salt Lake City. The thought 
recalled a passage of arms that had occurred at Denver between 
Dixon and Governor Gilpin. In his grand enthusiastic way, 
the Governor, pointing to the Cordillera, said, " Five hundred 
snowy ranges lie between this and San Francisco." " Peaks," 
said Dixon. " Ranges !" thundered Gilpin ; " I've seen them." 

Of the fifteen greater ranges to the westward of Salt Lake, 
eight at least are named from the rivers they contain, or are 
wholly nameless. Trade has preceded survey ; the country is 
not yet thoroughly explored. The six paper maps by which I 
travelled — the best and latest — differed in essential points. The 
position and length of the Great Salt Lake itself are not yet 
accurately known ; the height of Mount Hood has been made 
anything between nine thousand and twenty thousand feet ; 
the southern boundary line of Nevada State passes through 
untrodden wilds. A rectification of the limits of California and 

L 



146 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xix. 

Nevada was attempted no great time ago, and the head waters 
of some stream which formed a starting-point had been found 
to be erroneously laid down. At the flourishing young city of 
Aurora, in Esmeralda county, a court of California was sitting. 
A mounted messenger rode up at great pace, and, throwing his 
bridle round the stump, dashed in breathlessly, shouting, — 
" What's this here court ?" Being told that it was a Californian 
court, he said, " Wall, thet's all wrong : this here's Nevada. 
We've been an' rectified this boundary, an' California's a good 
ten mile off here." " Wall, Mr. Judge, I move this court ad- 
journ," said the plaintiff's counsel. "How can a court adjourn 
thet's not a court ?" replied the Judge. " Guess I'll go." And 
off he went. So, if the court of Aurora was a court, it must be 
sitting now. 

The coaching on this hne is beyond comparison the best the 
world can show. Drawn by six half-bred mustangs, driven by 
whips of the fame of the Hank Monk " who drove Greeley," the 
mails and passengers have been conveyed from Virginia City to 
the rail at Placerville, 154 miles, in 15 hours and 20 minutes, 
including a stoppage of half-an-hour for supper, and sixteen 
shorter stays to change horses. In this distance, the Sierra 
Nevada has to be traversed in a rapid rise of three thousand 
feet, a fall of a thousand feet, another rise of the same, and 
then a descent of five thousand feet on the California side. 

Before the road was made, the passage was one of extraordi- 
nary difficulty. A wagon once started, they say, from Folsom, 
bearing " Carson or bust " in large letters upon the tilt. After 
ten days, it returned lamely enough, with four of the twelve 
oxen gone, and bearing the label " Busted." 

When we were nearing Hank Monk's " piece," I became 
impatient to see the hero of the famous ride. What was my 
disgust when the driver of the earlier portion of the road 
appeared again upon the box in charge of six magnificent iron- 
greys ! The peremptory cry of "All aboard" brought me with- 
out remonstrance to the coach, but I took care to get upon the 
box, although, as we were starting before the break of day, the 
frost was terrible. To my relief, when I inquired after Hank, 
the driver said that he was at a ball at a timber ranch in the 
forest " six mile on." At early light we reached the spot — the 




•^J^'j^^^gfS^^g^S 



FRIDAY S STATION — VALLEY OF LAKE TAHOE. 




TEAMING UP THE GRADE AT SLIPPERY FORD, IN THE SIERRA. 



L 2 



CHAP. XIX.] VIRGINIA CITY. 149 

summit of the more eastern of the twin ranges of the Sierra. 
Out came Hank, amidst the cheers of the half-dozen men and 
women of the timber ranch who formed the " ball," wrapped up 
to the eyes in furs, and took the reins without a word. For 
miles he drove steadily and moodily along. I knew these 
drivers too well to venture upon speaking first when they were 
in the sulks ; at last, however, I lost all patience, and silently 
offered him a cigar. He took it without thanking me, but 
after a few minutes said : "Thet last driver, how did he drive?" 
I made some shuffling answer, when he cut in : " Drove as ef 
he were skeert ; and so he was. Look at them mustangs. 
Yoo — ou ! " As he yelled, the horses started at what out here 
they style " the run ; " and when, after ten minutes, he pulled 
up, we must have done three miles, round most violent and 
narrow turns, with only the bare precipice at the side, and a fall 
of often a hundred feet to the stream at the bottom of the 
ravine — the Simplon without its wall. Dropping into the 
talking mood, he asked me the usual questions as to my busi- 
ness, and whither I was bound. When I told him I thought of 
visiting Australia, he said, " D'you tell now ! Jess give my love 
— at Bendigo — to Gumption Dick." Not another word about 
Australia or Gumption Dick could I draw from him. I asked 
at Bendigo for Dick ; but not even the officer in command of 
the police had ever heard of Hank Monk's friend. 

The sun rose as we dashed through the grand landscapes of 
Lake Tahoe. On we went, through gloomy snow-drifts and 
still sadder forests of gigantic pines nearly three hundred feet in 
height, and down the canyon of the American river from the 
second range. Suddenly we left the snows, and burst through 
the pine woods into an open scene. From gloom there was a 
change to light ; from sombre green to glowing red and gold. 
The trees, no longer hung with icicles, were draped with 
Spanish moss. In ten yards we had come from winter into 
summer. Alkali was left behind for ever; we were in El Dorado, 
on the Pacific shores — in sunny, dreamy California. 



ISO GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xx. 



CHAPTER XX. 

El Dorado. 

The city of the high priest clothed in robes of gold figures 
largely in the story of Spanish discovery in America. The 
hardy soldiers who crossed the Atlantic in caravels and cock- 
boats, and toiled in leathern doublets and plate armour through 
the jungle swamp of Panama, were lured on through years of 
plague and famine by the dream of a country whose rivers 
flowed with gold. Diego de Mendoza found the land in 1532, 
but it was not till January, 1848, that James Marshall washed 
the Golden Sands of El Dorado. 

The Spaniards were not the first to place the earthly para- 
dise in America. Not to speak of New Atlantis, the Canadian 
Indians have never ceased to hand down to their sons a legend 
of western abi)des_ pf bliss, to which their souls journey after 
death, through frightful glens and forests. In their mystic 
chants they describe minutely the obstacles over which the 
souls must toil to reach the regions of perpetual spring. These 
stories are no mere dreams, but records of the great Indian 
migration from the West : the liquid-eyed Hurons, not sprung 
from the Canadian snows, may be Californian if they are not 
Malay, the Pacific shores their happy hunting-ground, the 
climate of Los Angeles their never-ending spring. 

The names "The Golden State" and "El Dorado" are doubly 
applicable to Cahfornia : her light and landscape, as well as her 
soil, are golden. Here on the Pacific side. Nature wears a robe 
of deep rich yellow : even the distant hills, no longer purple, 
are wrapt in golden haze. No more cliffs and canyons — all is 
rounded, soft, and warm. The Sierra, which faces eastwards, 
with four thousand feet of wall-like rock, on the west descends 




i^--^^«al 



VIEW ON T 



HE AMERICAN RIVER-THE PLACE WHERE GOLD WAS FIRST FOUND. 



CHAP. XX.] ELDORADO. 153 

gently in vine-clad slopes into the Califomian vales, and trends 
away in spurs towards the sea. The scenery of the Nevada 
side was weird, but these western foot-hills are unlike anything 
in the world. Drake, who never left the Pacific shores, named 
the country New Albion, from the whiteness of a headland on 
the coast ; but the first viceroys were less ridiculously misled 
by patriotic vanity, when they christened it New Spain. 

In the warm dry sunlight, we rolled down hills of rich red 
loam, and through forests of noble redwood — the Sequoia se?n- 
pervirens, brother to the Sequoia gigantea, or Wellingtonia of 
our lawns. Dashing at full gallop through the American River, 
just below its falls, where, in 1848, the Mormons first dug that 
Califomian gold which in the interests of their Church they had 
better have let alone, we came upon great gangs of Indians 
working by proxy upon the Continental railroad. The Indian's 
plan for living happily is a simple one : he sits and smokes in 
silence while his women work, and he thus lives upon the 
earnings of the squaws. Unlike a Mormon patriarch, he con- 
trives that polygamy shall pay, and says with the New Zealand 
Maori : " A man with one wife may starve, but a man with 
many wives grows fat." These fellows were Shoshones from 
the other side of the Plateau ; for the Pacific Indians, who are 
black, not red, will not even force their wives to work, which, 
in the opinion of the Western men, is the ultimate form of 
degradation in a race. Higher up the hills. Chinamen alone 
are employed ; but their labour is too costly to be thrown away 
upon the easier work. 

In El Dorado City we stayed not long enough for the ex- 
ploration of the once famous surface gold mines, now forming 
one long vineyard, but, rolling on, were soon among the tents 
of Placerville, which had been swept with fire a few months 
before. All these valley diggings have been deserted for deep- 
sinking — not that they are exhausted yet, but that the yield 
has ceased to be sufficient to tempt the gambling digger. The 
men who lived in Placerville and made it infamous throughout 
the world some years ago are scattered now through Nevada, 
Arizona, Montana, and the Frazer country, and Chinamen and 
Digger Indians have the old workings to themselves, settling 
their rights as against each other by daily battle and perpetual 



154 . GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. xx. 

feud. The Digger Indians are the most degraded of all the 
aborigines of North America — ^outcasts from the other tribes — 
men under a ban — " tapu," as their Maori cousins say — weapon- 
less, naked savages who live on roots, and pester the industrious 
Chinese. 

It is not with all their foes that the yellow men can cope so 
easily. In a tiny Chinese theatre in their camp near Placer- 
ville, I saw a farce which to the remainder of the audience was 
no doubt a very solemn drama, in which the adventures of two 
Celestials on the diggings were given to the world. The only 
scene in which the pantomime was sufficiently clear for me to 
read it without the possibility of error was one in which a white 
man — " Melican man " — came to ask for taxes. The China- 
men had paid their taxes once before, but the fellow said that 
didn't matter. The yellow men consulted together, and at last 
agreed that the stranger was a humbug, so the play ended with 
a big fight, in which they drove him off their ground. A 
Chinaman played the over-'cute Yankee, and did it well. 

Perhaps the tax-collectors in the remoter districts of the 
States count on the Chinese to make up the deficiencies in 
their accounts caused by the non-payment of their taxes by the 
whites ; for even in these days of comparative quiet and civi- 
lization, taxes are not gathered to their full amount in any of 
the Territories, and the justice of the collector is in Montana 
tempered by many a threat of instant lynching if he proceeds 
with his assessment. Even in Utah, the returns are far from 
satisfactory : the three great merchants of Salt Lake City 
should, if their incomes are correctly stated, contribute a 
heavier sum than that returned for the whole of the population 
of the territory. 

The white diggers who preceded the Chinese have left their 
traces in the names of lodes and placers. There is no town 
in California with such a title as the Coloradan city of Buck- 
skin Joe, but Yankee Jim comes near it. Placerville itself was 
formerly known as Hangtown, on account of its being the city 
in which "lynch-law was inaugurated." Dead Shot Flat is not 
far from here, and within easy distance are Hell's Delight, 
Jackass Gulch, and Loafer's Hill. The once famous Plug- 
ugly Gulch has now another name ; but of Chucklehead 



CHAP. XX.] EL DORADO. 155 

Diggings and Puppytown I could not find the whereabouts in 
my walks and rides. Graveyard Canyon, Gospel Gulch, and 
Paint-pot Hill are other Californian names. It is to be hoped 
that the English and Spanish names will live unmutilated in 
California and Nevada, to hand down in liquid syllables the 
history of a half-forgotten conquest, an already perished race. 
San Francisco has become " Frisco " in speech if not on paper, 
and Sacramento will hardly bear the wear and tear of Cali- 
fornian life; but the use of the Spanish tongue has spread 
among the Americans who have dealings with the Mexican 
country folk of California State, and, except in mining districts, 
the local names will stand. 

It is not places only that have strange designations in 
America. Out of the Puritan fashion of naming children from 
the Old Testament patriarchs has grown, by a sort of recoil, 
the custom of following the heroes of the classics, and When 
they fail, inventing strange titles for children. Mahonri Gaboon 
lives in Salt Lake City ; Attila Harding was secretar}^ to one of 
the governors of Utah ; Michigan University has for president 
Erastus Haven ; for superintendent, Oramel Hosford ; for pro- 
fessors, Abram Sanger, Silas Douglas, Moses Gunn, Zina Pitcher, 
Alonzo Pitman, De Volson Wood, Lucius Chapin, and Corydon 
Ford. Luman Stevens, Bolivar Barnum, Wyllys Ransom, Ozora 
Stearns, and Buel Derby were Michigan officers during the 
war ; and Epaphroditus Ransom was formerly governor of the 
State. Galusha Grow was speaker during a portion of Lincoln's 
presidential term. Theron Rockwell, Gershon Weston, and 
Bela Kellogg, are well-knowni politicians in Massachusetts, and 
Colonel Liberty Billings is equally prominent in Florida. In 
New England school-hsts it is hard to pick boys from girls. 
Who shall tell the sex of Lois Lombard, Asahel Morton, 
Ginery French, Royal Miller, Thankful Poyne ? A Chicago 
man, who was lynched in Central Illinois while I was in the 
neighbourhood, was named Alonza Tibbets. Eliphalet Amould 
and Velenus Sherman are ranchmen on the overland road ; 
Sereno Burt is an editor in Montana; Persis Boynton a mer- 
chant in Chicago. Zelotes Terry, Datus Damer, Zeryiah Rain- 
forth, Barzellai Stanton, Sardis Clark, Ozias Williams, Xenas 
Phelps, Converse Hopkins, and Hirodshai Blake, are names 



156 GBEATEB BRITAIN. [chap. xx. 

with which I have met. Zilpha, Huldah, Nabby, Basetha, 
Minnesota, and Semantha, are New England ladies ; while one 
gentleman of Springfield, lately married, caught a Tartia. One 
of the earliest enemies of the Mormons was Palatiah Allen ; 
one of their first converts Preserved Harris. Taking the 
pedigree of Joe Smith, the Mormon prophet, as that of a 
representative New England family, we shall find that his 
aunts were Lovisa and Lovina Mack, Dolly Smith, Eunice and 
Miranda Pearce ; his uncles. Royal, Ira, and Bushrod Smith. 
His grandfather's name was Asaelj of his great aunts one was 
Hephzibah, another Hypsebeth, and another Vasta. The pro- 
phet's eldest brother's name was Alvin; his youngest, Don 
Carlos ; his sister, Sophronia ; and his sister-in-law, Jerusha 
Smith; while a nephew was christened Chilon. One of the 
nieces was Levira, and another Rizpah. The first wife of 
George A. Smith, the prophet's cousin, is Bathsheba, and his 
eldest daughter also bears this name. 

In the smaller towns near Placerville, there is still a wide 
field for the discovery of character as well as gold ; but eccen- 
tricity among the diggers here seems chiefly to waste itself on 
food. The luxury of this Pacific country is amazing. The 
restaurants and cafes of each petty digging-town put forth 
bills-of-fare which the " Trois Freres " could not equal for inge- 
nuity j wine lists such as Delmonico's cannot beat. The 
facilities are great : except in the far interior or on the hills, 
one even spring reigns unchangeably — summer in all except 
the heat ; every fruit and vegetable of the world is perpetually 
in season. Fruit is not named in the hotel bills-of-fare, but all 
the day long there are piled in strange confusion on the tables. 
Mission grapes, the Californian Bartlet pears. Empire apples 
from Oregon, melons — English, Spanish, American : and Musk 
peaches, nectarines, and fresh almonds. All comers may help 
themselves, and wash down the fruit with excellent Californian- 
made Sauterne. If dancing, gambling, drinking, and still 
shorter cuts to the devil have their votaries among the diggers, 
there is no employment upon which they so freely spend their 
cash as on dishes cunningly prepared by cooks — Chinese, 
Italian, Bordelais — ^who follow every " rush." After the doctor 
and the coroner, no one makes money at the diggings like the 



CHAP. XX.] ELDORADO. 157 

cook. The dishes smell of the Californian soil ; baked rock- 
cod k la Buena Vista, broiled Californian quail with Russian 
River bacon, Sacramento snipes on toast, Oregon ham with 
champagne sauce, and a dozen other toothsome things — these 
were the dishes on the Placerville bill-of-fare in an hotel which 
had escaped the fire, but whose only guests were diggers and 
their friends. A few Atlantic States dishes were down upon 
the list : hominy, cod chowder — hardly equal, I fear, to that of 
Salem — sassafras candy, and squash tart, but never a mention 
of pork and molasses, dear to the Massachusetts boy. All 
these good things the diggers, when "dirt is plenty," moisten 
with Clicquot, or Heidsick cabinet; when returns are small, 
with their excellent Sonoma wine. 

Even earthquakes fail to interrupt the triumphs of the cooks. 
The last " bad shake " was fourteen days ago, but it is forgotten 
in the joy called forth by the discovery of a thirteenth way to 
cook fresh oysters, which are brought here from the coast by 
train. There is still a something in Placerville that smacks of 
the time when tin-tacks were selling for their weight in gold. 

Wandering through the only remaining street of Placerville 
before I left for the Southern country, I saw that grapes w^re 
marked " three cents a pound ; " but as the lowest coin kno^Mi 
on the Pacific shores is the ten-cent bit, the price exists but 
upon paper. Three pounds of grapes, however, for " a bit " is 
a practicable purchase, in which I indulged when starting on my 
journey south : in the towns, you have always the hotel supply. 
If the value of the smallest coin be a test of the prosperity of a 
countr}^, California must stand high. Not only is nothing less 
than the bit, or fivepence, known, but when fivepence is 
deducted from a " quarter," or shilling, fivepence is all you get 
or give for change — a gain or loss -upon which Californian shop- 
keepers look with profound indifference. 

Hearing a greater jinghng of glasses from one bar-room than 
from all the other hundred whisky-shops of Placerville, I 
turned into it to seek the cause, and found a Vennonter 
lecturing on Lincoln and the war, to an audience of some fifty 
diggers. The lecturer and bar-keeper stood together within the 
sacred inclosure, the one mixing his drinks, while the other 
rounded off his periods in the inflated Western style. The 



158 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xx. 

audience were critical and cold till near the close of the oration, 
when the "corpse-revivers" they were drinking seemed to take 
effect, and to be at the bottom of the stentorian shout " Thet's 
bully," with which the peroration was rewarded. The Ver- 
monter told me that he had come round from Panama, and was 
on his way to Austin, as Placerville was " played out " since its 
"claims" had "fizzled." 

They have no lecture-room here at present, as it seems ; but 
that there are churches, however small, appears from a paragraph 
in the Placerville news-sheet of to-day, which chronicles the 
removal of a Methodist meeting-house from Block A to Block 
C, vice a Catholic chapel retired, " having obtained a superior 
location." 

A few days were all that I could spend in the valleys that he 
between the Sierra and the Contra Costa Range, basking in a 
rich sunlight, and unsurpassed in the world for climate, scenery, 
and soil. This single state — one of forty-five — has twice the area 
of Great Britain, the most fertile of known soils, and the sun 
and sea-breeze of Greece. Western rhapsodies are the expres- 
sion of the intoxication produced by such a spectacle ; but they 
are outdone by facts. 

For mere charm to the eye, it is hard to give the palm 
between the cracks and canyons of the Sierra and the softer 
vales of the Coast Range, where the hot sun is tempered by 
the cool Pacific breeze, and thunder and lightning are unknown. 
To one coming from the wilds of the Carson desert and of 
Mirage Plains, the more sensuous beauty of the lower dells has 
for the eye the relief that travellers from the coast must seek in 
the loftier heights and precipices of the Yosemite. The oak- 
filled valleys of the Contra Costa Range have all the pensive 
repose of the sheltered vales that lie between the Apennines 
and the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona ; but California has 
the advantage in her skies. Italy has the blue, but not the 
golden haze. 

Nothing can be more singular than the variety of beauty that 
lies hid in these Pacific slopes ; all that is best in Canada and 
the Eastern States finds more than its equal here. The terrible 
grandeur of Cape Trinite on the Saguenay, and the panorama 
of loveliness from the terrace at Quebec are alike outdone. 




THE BRIDAL VEIL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY. 



CHAP. XX.] ELDORADO. i6i 

Americans certainly need not go to Europe to find scenery ; 
but neither need they go to Cahfornia, or even Colorado. 
Those who tell us that there is no such thing as natural beauty 
west of the Atlantic can scarcely know the Eastern, while they 
ignore the Western and Central States, The world can show 
few scenes more winning than Israel's River Valley in the 
White Mountains of New Hampshire, or North Conway in the 
southern slopes of the same range. Nothing can be more full 
of grandeur than the passage of the James at Balcony Falls, 
where the river rushes through a crack in the Appalachian 
chain ; the wilderness of Northern New York is unequalled of 
ts kind, and there are delicious landscapes in the Adirondacks. 
As for river scenery, the Hudson is grander than the Rhine ; 
the Susquehanna is lovelier than the Meuse; the Schuylkill 
prettier than the Seine ; the Mohawk more enchanting than the 
Dart. Of the rivers of North Europe, the Neckar alone is not 
beaten in the States. 

Americans admit that their scenery is fine, but pretend that 
it is wholly wanting in the interest that historic memories 
bestow. So-called Republicans affect to find a charm in Bishop 
Hatto's Tower which is wanting in Irving's " Sunnyside ;" the 
ten thousand virgins of Cologne live in their fancy, while Con- 
stitution Island and Fort Washington are forgotten names. 
Americans or Britishers, we Saxons are all alike — a wandering, 
discontented race ; we go 4000 miles to find us Sleepy Hollow, 
or Killian Van Rensselaer's Castle, or Hiawatha's great red 
pipestone quarry ; and the Americans, who live in the castle, 
picnic yearly in the Hollow, and flood the quarry for a skating 
rink, come here to England to visit Burns's house, or to sit in 
Pope's arm-chair. 

Down South I saw clearly the truth of a thought that struck 
me before I had been ten minutes west of the Sierra Pass. 
California is Saxon only in the looks and language of the people 
of its towns. In Pennsylvania, you may sometimes fancy your- 
self in Sussex ; while in New England, you seem only to be in 
some part of Europe that you have never happened to light 
upon before; in California, you are at last in a new world. 
The hills are weirdly peaked or flattened, the skies are new, the 
birds and plants are new ; the atmosphere, crisp though warm, 

M 



1 62 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xx. 

is unlike any in the world but that of South Australia. It will 
be strange if the Pacific coast does not produce a new school of 
Saxon poets — painters it has already given to the world. 

Returning to Placerville, after an eventless exploration of the 
exquisite scenery to the south, I took the railway once again, 
for the first time since I had left Manhattan City — 1800 miles 
away — and was soon in Sacramento, the State capital, now re- 
covering slowly from the flood of 1862. Near the city I made 
out Oak Grove — famed for duels between well-known Cali- 
fornians. Here it was that General Denver, State senator, shot 
Mr. Gilbert, the representative in Congress, in a duel fought 
with rifles. Here, too, it was that Mr. Thomas, district 
attorney for Placer county, killed Dr. Dickson, of the Marine 
Hospital, in a duel with pistols in 1854. Records of duels 
form a serious part of the State history. At Lone Mountain 
Cemetery near San Francisco, there is a great marble monu- 
ment to the Plon. David Broderick, shot by Chief Justice 
Terry, of the Supreme Court, in 1859. 

A few hours' quiet steaming in the sunlight down the 
Sacramento River, past Rio Vista and Montezuma, through the 
gap in the Contra Costa Range, at which the grand volcanic 
peak of Monte Diablo stands sentinel watching over the 
Martinez Straits, and there opened to the south and west a vast 
mountain-surrounded bay. Volumes of cloud were rolling in 
unceasingly from the ocean, through the Golden Gate, past the 
fortified island of Alcatras, and spending themselves in the 
opposite shores of San Rafael, Benicia, and Vallejo. At last I 
was across the continent, and face to face with the Pacific. 



i63 



CHAPTER XXI. 

Lynch Law. 

" Californians are called the scum of the earth, yet their great 
city is the best policed in the world," said a New York friend 
to me, when he heard that I thought of crossing the continent 
to San Francisco. 

"Them New Yorkers is a sight too fond of looking after 
other people's morals," replied an old " Forty-niner," to whom 
I repeated this phrase, having first toned it down, however. 
"Still," he went on, "our history's baddish, but it ain't for us to 
play showman to our own worst pints : — let every man skin his 
own skunk !" 

The story of the early days of San Francisco, as to which my 
curiosity was thus excited, is so curious an instance of the 
development of an English community under the most in- 
auspicious circumstances, that the whole time which I spent in 
the city itself I devoted to hearing the tale from those who 
knew the actors. Not only is the history of the two Vigilance 
Committees in itself characteristic, but it works in with what I 
had gathered in Kansas, Illinois, and Colorado as to the opera- 
tion of the claim-clubs ; and the stories, taken together, form a 
typical picture of the rise of a New English country. 

The discovery of gold in 1848 brought down on luckless 
California the idle, the reckless, the vagabonds first of Polynesia, 
then of all the world. Street fighting, public gaming, masked 
balls given by unknown women and paid for nobody knew how, 
but attended by governor, supervisors, and alcade — all " these 
were minor matters by the side of the general undefined 
rufiftanism of the place. Before the end of 1849, San Francisco 
presented on a gigantic scale much the same appearance that 
Helena in Montana wears in 1866. 

M 2 



1 64 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxi. 

Desperadoes poured in from all sides, the best of the bad 
flocking off to the mines, while the worst among the villains — 
those who lacked energy as well as moral sense — remained in 
the city, to raise by thieving or in the gambling-booth the "pile" 
that they Avere too indolent to earn by pick and pan. Hundreds 
of " emancipists " from Sydney, " old lags " from Norfolk Island, 
the pick of the criminals of England, still further trained and 
confirmed in vice and crime by the experiences of Macquarie 
Harbour and Port Arthur, rushed to San Francisco to continue 
a career which the vigilance of the police made hopeless in 
Tasmania and New South Wales. The floating vice of the 
Pacific ports of South America soon gathered to a spot where 
there were not only men to fleece, but men who, being fleeced, 
could pay. The police were necessarily few, for, appoint a man 
to-day, and to-morrow he was gone to the Placers with some 
new friend ; those who could be prevailed upon to remain a 
fortnight in the force were accessible to bribes from the men 
they were set to watch. They themselves admitted their inac- 
tion, but ascribed it to the continual change of place among 
the criminals, which prevented the slightest knowledge of their 
characters and haunts. The Australian gaol-birds formed a 
quarter known as " Sydney Town," which soon became what 
the Bay of Islands had been ten years before — the Alsatia of 
the Pacific. In spite of daily murders, not a single criminal 
was hanged. 

The ruffians did not all agree : there were jealousies among 
the various bands j feuds between the Australians and Chilians ; 
between the Mexicans and the New Yorkers. Under the various 
names of " Hounds," " Regulators," " Sydney Ducks," and "Sydney 
Coves," the English convict party organized themselves in oppo- 
sition to the Chilenos as well as to the police and law-abiding 
citizens. Gangs of villains, whose sole bond of union was 
robbery or murder, marched, armed with bludgeons and 
revolvers, every Sunday afternoon, to the sound of music, un- 
hindered through the streets, professing that they were "guardians 
of the community " against the Spaniards, Mexicans, and South 
Americans. 

At last a movement took place among the merchants and 
reputable inhabitants which resulted in the break-up of the 



CHAP. XXI.] LYNCH LAW. 165 

Australian gangs. By an uprising of the American citizens of 
San Francisco, in response to a proclamation by T. M. Leaven- 
worth, the alcade, twenty of the most notorious among the 
" founds " were seized and shipped to China : it is believed 
that some were taken south in irons, and landed near Cape 
Horn. " Anywhere so that they could not come back," as my 
informant said. 

For a week or two things went well, but a fresh in-pour of 
rogues and villains soon swamped the volunteer police by sheer 
force of numbers; and in February, 185 1, occurred an instance 
of united action among the citizens, which is noticeable as the 
forerunner of the Vigilance Committees. A Mr. Jansen had 
been stunned by a blow from a slung shot, and his person and 
premises rifled by Australian thieves. During the examination 
of two prisoners arrested on suspicion, five thousand citizens 
gathered round the City Hall, and handbills were circulated, in 
which it was proposed that the prisoners should be lynched. In 
the afternoon, an attempt to seize the men was made, but 
repulsed by another section of the citizens — the Washington 
guard. A meeting was held on the Plaza, and a committee 
appointed to watch the authorities, and prevent a release. A 
well-known citizen, Mr. Brannan, made a speech, in which he 
said : " We, the people, are the mayor, the recorder, and the 
laws." The alcade addressed the crowd, and suggested, by way 
of compromise, that they should elect a jury which should sit 
in the regular court, and try the prisoners. This was refused, 
and the people elected not only a jury, but three judges, a 
sheriff, a clerk, a public prosecutor, and two counsel for the 
defence. This court then tried the prisoners in their absence, 
and the jury failed to agree — nine were for conviction, and three 
were doubtful. "Hang 'em, anyhow; majority rules," was the 
shout, but the popular judges stood firm, and discharged their 
jury, while the people acquiesced. The next day, the prisoners 
were tried and convicted by the regular court, although they 
were ultimately found to be innocent men. 

Matters now went from bad to worse : five times San Fran- 
cisco was swept from end to end by fires known to have been 
helped on, if not originally kindled, by incendiaries in the hope 
of plunder; and when, by the fires of May and June, 185 1, 



i66 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxi. 

hardly a house was left untouched, the pious Bostonians held 
up their hands, and cried " Gomorrah !" 

Immediately after the discovery that the June fire was not 
an accident, the Vigilance Committee was formed, being self- 
appointed, and consisting of the foremost merchants in the 
place. This was on the yth of June, according to my friend ; 
on the 9th, according to the Cahfornian histories. It was 
rumoured that the Committee consisted of two hundred citizens ; 
it was known that they were supported by the whole of the city 
press. They published a declaration, in which they stated that 
there is "no security for life or property under the . . . law as 
now administered." This they ascribed to the " quibbles of the 
law," the "corruption of the police," the " insecurity of prisons," 
the *' laxity of those who pretend to administer justice." The 
secret instructions to the Committee contained a direction that 
the members should at once assemble at the committee-room 
whenever signals consisting of two taps on a bell were heard at 
intervals of one minute. The Committee was organized with 
President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, Sergeant-at-arms, 
standing Committee on Qualifications, and standing Committee 
of Finance. No one was to be admitted a member unless he 
were " a respectable citizen, and approved by the Committee 
on Qualifications." 

The very night of their organization, according to the histo- 
ries, or three nights later, according to my friend Mr. A , 

the work of the Committee began. Some boatmen at Central 
Wharf saw something which led them to follow out into the 
Yerba Buena cove a man, whom they captured after a sharp 
row. As they overhauled him, he threw overboard a safe, just 
stolen from a bank, but this was soon fished out. He was at 
once carried off to the committee-room of the Vigilants, and the 
bell of the Monumental Engine Company struck at intervals, 
as the rule prescribed. Not only the Committee, but a vast 
surging crowd collected, although midnight was now past. 

A was on the Plaza, and says that every man was armed, 

and evidently disposed to back up the Committee. Accord- 
ing to the Califor?iia Alta, the chief of the police came up 
a little before i a.m., and tried to force an entrance to the 
room j but he was met, politely enough, with a show of re- 



CHAP. XXI.] LYNCH LAW. 167 

volvers sufficient to annihilate his men, so he judged it prudent 
to retreat. 

At one o'clock the bell of the engine-house began to toll, 
and the crowd became excited. Mr. Brannan came out of the 
committee-room, and, standing on a mound of sand, addressed 
the citizens. As well as my friend could remember, his words 
were these : " Gentlemen, the man — Jenkins by name — a 
Sydney convict, whose supposed offence you know, has had a 
fair trial before eighty gentlemen, and been unanimously found 
guilty by them. I have been deputed by the Committee to ask, 
whether it is your pleasure that he be hanged ?" " Ay !" from 
every man in the crowd. " He will be given an hour to pre- 
pare for death, and the Rev. Mr. Mines has been already sent 
for to minister to him. Is this your pleasure ?" Again a storm 
of " Ay !" Nothing was known in the crowd of the details of 
the trial, except that counsel had been heard on the prisoner's 
behalf For another hour the excitement of the crowd was 
permitted to continue, but at two o'clock the doors of the 
committee-room were thrown open, and Jenkins was seen 

smoking a cigar. Mr. A said that he did not believe the 

prisoner expected a rescue, but thought that an exhibition of 
pluck might make him popular with the crowd, and save him. 
A procession of Vigilants with drawn Colts was then formed, 
and set off in the moonlight across the four chief streets to the 
Plaza. Some of the people shouted "To the flagstaff!" but 
there came a cry, " Don't desecrate the Liberty Pole. To the 
old adobe ! the old adobe !" and to the old adobe custom-house 
the prisoner was dragged. In five minutes he w^as hanging 
from the roof, three hundred citizens lending a hand at the 

rope. At six in the morning A went home, but he heard 

that the police cut down the body about that time, and carried 
it to the coroner's house. 

An inquest was held next day. The city officers swore that 
they had done all they could to prevent the execution, but 
they refused to give up the names of the Vigilance Committee. 
The members themselves were less cautious. Mr. Brannan 
and others came forward of their own proper motion, and dis- 
closed all the circumstances of the trial. One hundred and 
forty of the Committee backed them up by a written protestation 



1 68 GREATER BRITAIN. [ghap. xxi. 

against interference with the Vigilants, to which their signatures 
were appended. Protest and evidence have been pubhshed, 
not only in the newspapers of the time, but in the San Francisco 
"Annals." The coroner's jury found a verdict of " Strangula- 
tion, consequent on the concerted action of a body of citizens 
calling themselves a Committee of Vigilance." An hour after 
the verdict was given, a mass meeting of the whole of the re- 
spectable inhabitants was held in the Plaza, and a resolution 
approving of the action of the Committee passed by acclama- 
tion. 

In July, 185 1, the Committee ■ hanged another man on the 
Market-street wharf, and appointed a sub-committee of thirty 
to board every ship that crossed the bar, seize all persons sus- 
pected of being " Sydney Coves," and re-ship them to New 
South Wales. 

In August came the great struggle between the Vigilants and 
constituted authority. It was sharp and decisive. Whittaker 
and M^'Kenzie, two Sydney Coves, were arrested by the Com- 
mittee for various crimes, and sentenced to death. The next 
day. Sheriff Hayes seized them on a writ of habeas corpus, in 
the rooms of the Committee. The bell was tolled ; the citizens 
assembled^ the Vigilants told their story, the men were seized 
once more, and by noon they were hanging from the loft of the 
committee-house, by the ordinar}^ lifting tackle for heavy goods. 
Fifteen thousand people were present, and approved. " After 

this," said A , " there could be no mistake about the 

citizens supporting the Committee." 

By September, the Vigilants had transported all the " Coves " 
on whom they could lay hands ; so they issued a proclamation, 
declaring that for the future they would confine themselves to 
aiding the law by tracing out and guarding criminals ; and in 
pursuance of their decision, they soon afterwards helped the 
authorities in preventing the lynching of a ship-captain for 
cruelty to his men. 

After the great sweep of 185 1, things became steadily worse 
again till they culminated in 1855, a year to which my friend 
looked back with horror. Not counting Indians, there were 
four hundred persons died by violence in California in that 
single year. Fifty of these were lynched, a dozen were hanged 



CHAP. XXI.] . LYNCH LAW. 169 

by law, a couple of dozen shot by the sheriffs and tax-collectors 
in the course of their duty. The officers did not escape scot 
free. The under-sheriff of San Francisco was shot in Mission 
Street, in broad daylight, by a man upon whom he was trying 
to execute a writ of ejectment. 

Judges, mayors, supervisors, politicians, all were bad alike. 
The merchants of the city were from New England, New York, 
and foreign lands ; but the men who assumed the direction of 
public affairs, and especially of public funds, were Southerners, 
many of them " Border Ruffians" of the most savage stamp — 
" Pikes," as they were called, from Pike's County in Missouri, 
from which their leaders came. Instead of banding themselves 
together to oppose the laws, these rogues and ruffians found it 
easier to control the making of them. Their favourite method 
of defeating their New England foes was by the simple plan of 
" stuffing," or filling the ballot-box with forged tickets when the 
elections were concluded. Two Irishmen — Casey and Sullivan 
— were their tools in this shameful work. Werth, a Southerner, 
the leader of Casey's gang, had been denounced in the San 
Francisco Btdletin as the murderer of a man named Kittering ; 
and Casey, meeting James King, editor of the BiiUetiii^ shot 
him dead in Montgomery Street in the middle of the day. 
Casey and one of his assistants — a man named Cora — were 
hanged by the people as Mr. King's body was being carried to 
the grave, and Sullivan committed suicide the same day. 

Books were opened for the enrolment of the names of those 
who were prepared to support the Committee : nine thousand 
grown white males inscribed themselves within four days. 
Governor Johnson at once declared that he should suppress 
the Committee, but the city of Sacramento prevented war by 
offering a thousand men for the Vigilants' support, the other 
Californian cities following suit. The Committee got together 
6000 stand of arms and thirty cannon, and fortified their rooms 
with earthworks and barricades. The Governor, having called 
on the general commanding the Federal forces at Benicia, who 
wisely refused to interfere, marched upon the city, was sur- 
rounded, and taken prisoner with all his forces without the 
striking of a blow. 

Having now obtained the control of the State government? 



lyo GREATER BBITAIN. [chap. xxt. 

the Committee proceeded to banish all the " Pikes " and 
" Pukes." Four were hanged, forty transported, and many 
ran away. This done, the Committee prepared an elaborate 
report upon the property and finances of the State, and then, 
after a great parade, ten regiments strong, upon the Plaza and 
through the streets, they adjourned for ever, and " the thirty- 
three " and their ten thousand backers retired into private life 
once more, and put an end to this singular spectacle of the 
rebellion of a free people against rulers nominally elected by 
itself. As my friend said, when he finished his long yarn, 
" This has more than archseologic interest : we may live to see 
a similar Vigilance Committee in New York." 

For my own part, I do not believe that an uprising against bad 
government is possible in New York City, because there the sup- 
porters of bad government are a majority of the people. Their 
interest is the other way : in increased city taxes they evidently 
lose far more than, as a class, they gain by what is spent among 
them in corruption ; but when they come to see this, they will 
not rebel against their corrupt leaders, but elect those whom 
they can trust. In San Francisco, the case was widely different : 
through the ballot frauds, a majority of the citizens were being 
infamously misgoverned by a contemptible minority, and the 
events of 1856 were only the necessary acts of the majority to 
regain their power, coupled with certain exceptional acts in the 
shape of arbitrary transportation of " Pikes " and Southern 
rowdies, justified by the exceptional circumstances of the young 
community. At Melbourne, under circumstances somewhat 
similar, our English colonists, instead of setting up a committee, 
built Pentridge Stockade with walls thirty feet high, and created 
a military police, with almost arbitrary power. The difference 
is one of words. The whirl of life in a young gold country not 
only prevents the best men entering the political field, and so 
forces citizens to exercise their right of choice only between 
candidates of equal badness, but so engrosses the members of 
the community who exercise the ballot as to prevent the detec- 
tion of fraud till it has ruled for years. Throughout young 
countries generally you find men say : " Yes ! we're robbed, we 
know; but no one has time to go into that." " I'm for the old 
men," said a Californian elector once, " for they've plundered 



CHAP. XXI.] LTNCH LAW. 171 

US SO long that they're gorged, and can't swallow any more." 
" No," said another, "let's have fresh blood. Give every man 
a chance of robbing the State. Share and share alike." The 
wonder is, not that in such a State as California was till lately 
the machinery of government should work unevenly, but that 
it should work at all. Democracy has never endured so rough 
a test as that from which it has triumphantly emerged in the 
Golden State and City. 

The public spirit with which the merchants came forward 
and gave time and money to the cause of order is worthy of all 
praise, and the rapidity with which the organization of a new 
government was carried through is an instance of the singular 
power of our race for building up the machinery of self-govern- 
ment under conditions the most unpromising. Instead of the 
events of 1856 having been a case of opposition to law and 
order, they will stand in history as a remarkable proof of the 
law-abiding character of a people who vindicated justice by a 
demonstration of overwhelming force, laid down their arms, and 
returned in a few weeks to the peaceable routine of business 
life. 

If, in the merchant founders of the Vigilance Committees of 
San Francisco we can see the descendants of the justice-loving 
Germans of the time of Tacitus, I found in another class of 
vigilants the moral offspring of Alfred's village aldermen of our 
own Saxon age. From Mr. WilHam M. Byers, now editor of 
the Rocky Motmtains JVeim, I had heard the story of the early 
settlers' land-law in Missouri ; in Stanton's office in Denver 
City, I had seen the records of the Arapahoe county claim-club, 
with which he had been connected at the first settlement of 
Colorado ; but at San Jose, I heard details of the settlers' 
custom-law— the Californian " grand-coutumier," it might be 
called — which convinced me that, in order to find the rudiments 
of all that, politically speaking, is best and most vigorous in the 
Saxon mind, you must seek countries in which Saxon civilization 
itself is in its infancy. The greater the difficulties of the situa- 
tion, the more racy the custom, the more national the law. 

When a new State began to be " settled up " — that is, its 
lands entered upon by actual settlers, not land- sharks — the 
inhabitants often found themselves in the wilderness, far in 



172 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxi. 

advance of attorneys, courts, and judges. It was their custom 
when this occurred to divide the territory into districts of fifteen 
or twenty miles square, and form for each a " claim-club " to 
protect the land-claims, or property of the members. When- 
ever a question of title arose, a judge and jury were chosen 
from among the members to hear and determine the case. The 
occupancy title was invariably protected up to a certain number 
of acres, which was differently fixed by different clubs, and 
varied in those of which I have heard the rules from loo to 250 
acres, averaging 150. The United States' "Homestead" and 
" Pre-emption " laws were founded on the practice of these 
clubs. The claim-clubs interfered only for the protection of 
their members, but they never scrupled to hang wilful offenders 
against their rules, whether members or outsiders. Execution 
of the decrees of the club was generally left to the county 
sheriff, if he was a member, and in this case a certain air of 
legality was given to the local action. It is perhaps not too 
much to say that a Western sheriff is an irresponsible official, 
possessed of gigantic powers, but seldom known to abuse them. 
He is a C^sar, chosen for his honesty, fearlessness, clean shoot- 
ing, and quick loading, by men who know him well : if he 
breaks down, he is soon deposed, and a better man chosen for 
dictator. I have known a Western paper say : " Frank is our 
man for sheriff, next October. See the way he shot one of the 
fellows who robbed his store, and followed up the other, and 
shot him too the next day. Frank is the boy for us." In such 
a state of society as this, the distinction between law and lynch- 
law can scarcely be said to exist, and in the eyes of every 
Western settler the claim-club backed by the sheriff's name was 
as strong and as full of the majesty of the law as the Supreme 
Court of the United States. Mr. Byers told me of a case of 
the infliction of death-punishment by a claim-club which occurred 
in Kansas after the " Homestead " law was passed allowing the 
occupant, when he had tilled and improved the land for five 
years, to purchase it at one and a quarter dollars an acre. A 
man settled on a piece of land, and laboured on it for some 
years. He then " sold it," which he had, of course, no power 
to do, the land being still the property of the United States. 
Having done this, he went and "pre-empted" it under the 



CHAP. XXI.] LTNCE LAW. 173 

Homestead Act, at the government price. "When he attempted 
to eject the man to whom he had assumed to sell, the club 
ordered the sheriff to " put the man away," and he was never 
seen again. Perhaps Mr. Byers was the sheriff; he seemed to 
have the details at his fingers' ends, and his later history in 
Denver, where he once had the lynching rope round his neck 
for exposing gamblers, testifies to his boldness. 

Some of. the rascalities which the claim-clubs were expected 
to put down were ingenious enough. A man would build a 
dozen houses on a block of land, and, going there to enter on 
possession after they were complete, would find that in the 
night the whole of them had disappeared. Frauds under the 
Homestead Act were both many and strange. Men were 
required to prove that they had on the land a house of at least 
ten feet square. They have been known to whittle out a toy- 
house with their bowie, and, carrying it to the land, to measure 
it in the presence of a friend — twelve inches by thirteen. In 
court the pre-emptor, examining his own witness, would say, 
" What are the dimensions of that house of mine ?" " Twelve 
by thirteen." " That will do." In Kansas, a log-house of the 
regulation size was fitted up on wheels, and let at ten dollars a 
day, in order that it might be wheeled on to different lots, to be 
sworn to as a house upon the land. Men have been known to 
make a window-sash and frame, and keep them inside of their 
windowless huts, to swear that they had a window in their house 
— another of the requirements of the Act. It is a singular 
mark of deference to the traditions of a Puritan ancestry that 
such accomplished liars as the Western land-sharks should feel 
it necessary to have any foundation whatever for their lies ; but 
not only in this respect are they a curious race. One of their 
peculiarities is that, however wealthy they may be, they will 
never place their money out at interest, never sink it in a spe- 
culation, however tempting, when there is no prospect of almost 
immediate realization. To turn their money over often, at 
whatever risk, is with these men an axiom. The advance-guard 
of civilization, they push out into an unknown wilderness, and 
seize upon the available lots, the streams, the springs, the river 
bottoms, the falls or "water-privileges," and then, using their 
interest in the territorial legislature — using, perhaps, direct cor- 



174 GREATER BRITAIN. [ohap. xxi. 

ruption in some cases — they procure the location of the State 
capital upon their lands, or the passage of the railroads through 
their valleys. The capital of Nebraska has been fixed in this 
manner at a place two hundred and fifty miles from the nearest 
settlement. A newspaper appeared suddenly, dated from " Lin- 
coln City, centre of Nebraska territory," but published in reality 
in Omaha. To cope with such fellows, Western sheriffs must 
be no ordinary men. 

Thanks to the Vigilance Committees, California stands now 
before the other Far-Western States. Rowdyism is being put 
down as the God-fearing Northerners gain ground. It may still 
be dangerous to stroke your beard in a bar-room at Placerville 
or El Dorado ; " a gentleman in the loafing and chancing line " 
may still be met v/ith in Sacramento ; here and there a Mis- 
sourian " Pike," as yet unhung, may boast that he can whip his 
weight in wild-cats ; but San Francisco has at least reached the 
age of outward decorum, has shut up public gaming-houses, and 
supports four Church papers. 

In Colorado, Lynch-law is not as yet forgotten : the day we 
entered Denver, the editor of the Gazette expressed, " on his- 
torical grounds," his deep regret at the cutting-down of two fine 
cottonwood-trees that stood on Cherry Creek. When we came 
to talk to him, we found that the " history " alluded to was that 
of the " escape up " these trees of many an early inhabitant of 
Denver City. " There's the tree we used to put the jury under, 
and that's the one we hanged 'em on. Put a cart under the 
tree, and the boy standing on it, with the rope around him ; 
give him time for a pray, then smack the whip, and ther' you 
air." 

In Denver we were reserved upon the subject of Vigilance 
Committees, for it is dangerous sometimes to make close inqui- 
ries as to their constitution. While I was in Leavenworth, a 
man was hanged by the mob at Council Bluffs for asking the 
names of the Vigilants who had hanged a friend of his the year 
before. We learnt enough, however, at Denver to show that 
the Committee in that city still exists ; and in Virginia and 
Carson I know that the organizations are continued ; but 
offenders are oftener shot quietly than publicly hanged, in order 
to prevent an outcry, and avoid the vengeance of the relatives. 



CHAP. XXI.] LYNCH LAW. 175 

The verdict of the jury never fails to be respected, but acquittal 
is almost as unknown as mercy to those convicted. Innocent 
men are seldom tried before such juries, for the case must be 
clear before the sheriff will run the risk of being shot in making 
the arrest. When the man's fate is settled, the sheriff drives 
out quietly in his buggy, and next day men say when they meet, 

"Poor 's escaped;" or else it is, "The sheriff's shot. 

Who'll run for office ?" 

It will be seen from the history of the Vigilance Committees, 
as I heard their stories from Kansas to California, that they are 
to be divided into two classes, with sharply-marked characteris- 
tics — those where Committee, hangings, transportations, warn- 
ings, are alike open to the light of day, such as the Committees 
of San Francisco in 1856, and the Sandwich Islands in 1866, 
and those — unhappily the vast majority — where all is secret 
and irresponsible. Here, in San Francisco, the Committee was 
the government ; elsewhere, the organization was less wide, 
and the members, though always shrewdly guessed at, never 
known. Neither class should be necessary, unless when a gold 
rush brings down upon a State the desperadoes of the world; 
but there is this encouragement even in the history of Lynch- 
law : that, although Enghsh settlements often start wild, they 
never have been known to go wild. 

The men who formed the second Vigilance Committee of 
San Francisco are now the governor, senators, and Congress- 
men of California, the mayors and sheriffs of her towns. Now- 
a-days the citizens are remarkable, even among Americans, for 
their love of law and order. Their city, though still subject to 
a yearly deluge from the outpourings of all the overcrowded 
slums of Europe, is, as the New Yorker said, the best policed 
in all America. In politics, too, it is remarked that party 
organizations have no power in this State from the moment 
that they attempt to nominate corrupt or time-serving men. 
The people break loose from their caucuses and conventions, 
and vote in a body for their honest enemies rather than for 
corrupt friends. , They have the advantage of singular ability, 
for there is not an average man in California. 



176 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxii. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

Golden City. 

The first letter which I dehvered in San Francisco was from a 
Mormon gentleman to a merchant, who, as he read it, ex- 
claimed : " Ah ! so you want to see the lions ? I'll pick you 
up at three, and take you there.'' I wondered, but went, as 
travellers do. 

At the end of a pleasant drive along the best road in all 
America, I found myself upon a cliff overhanging the Pacific, 
with a glorious outlook, seawards towards the Farallones, and 
northwards to Cape Benita and the Golden Gate. Beneath, a 
few hundred yards from shore, was a conical rock, covered with 
shapeless monsters, plashing the water and roaring ceaselessly, 
while others swam around. These were " the lions," my 
acquaintance said — the sea-lions. I did not enter upon an 
explanation of our slang phrase, " the lions," which the 
Mormon, himself an Englishman, no doubt had used, but took 
the first opportunity of seeing the remainder of " the lions " of 
the Golden City. 

The most remarkable spot in all America is Mission Dolores, 
in the outskirts of San Francisco City — once a settlement of the 
Society of Jesus, and now partly blanket factory and partly 
church. Nowhere has the conflict between the Saxon and 
Latin races been so sharp and so decisive. For eighty or 
ninety years California was first Spanish, then Mexican, then a 
half independent Spanish- American republic. The progress of 
those ninety years was shown in the foundation of half-a-dozen 
Jesuit " missions," which held each of them a thousand or two 
tame Indians as slaves, while a few military settlers and their 
friends divided the interior with the savage tribes. Gold, 



CHAP, xxii.] GOLDEN CITY. i-j-j 

which had been discovered here by Drake, was never sought : 
the fathers, hke the Mormon chiefs, discouraged mining ; it 
interfered with their tame Indians. Here and there, in four 
cases, perhaps in all, a presidio, or castle, had been built for 
the protection of the mission, and a puebla, or tiny free town, 
had been suffered to grow up, not without remonstrance from 
the fathers. Los Angeles had thus sprung from the mission of 
that name, the fishing village of Yerba Buena, from Mission 
Dolores on the bay of San Francisco, and San Jose', from Santa 
Clara. In 1846, Fremont the Pathfinder conquered the country 
with forty-two men, and now it has a settled population of nearly 
half a million ; San Francisco is as large as Newcastle or Hull, 
as flourishing as Liverpool, and the Saxon blanket factory has 
replaced the Spanish mission. 

The story might have served as a warning to the French 
Emperor, when he sent ships and men to found a " Latin 
empire in America." 

Between the presidio and the Mission Dolores lies Lone 
Mountain Cemetery, in that solitary calm and majesty of beauty 
which befits a home for the dead, the most lovely of all the 
cemeteries of America. Queen Emma, of the Sandwich Islands, 
who is here at present, said of it yesterday to a Californian 
merchant : " How comes it that you Americans, who live so 
fast, find time to bury your dead so beautifully ?" 

Lone Mountain is not the only delicious spot that is given to 
the American dead. Laurel Hill, Mount Auburn, Greenwood, 
Cypress Grove, Hollywood, Oak Hill, are names not more full 
of poetry than are the places to which they belong ; but Lone 
Mountain has over all an advantage in its giant fuchsias, and 
scarlet geraniums of the size and shape of trees ; in the distant 
glimpses, too, of the still Pacific. 

San Francisco is ill placed, so far as mere building facilities 
are concerned. When the first houses were built in 1845 and 
1846, they stood on a strip of beach surrounding the sheltered 
cove of Yerba Buena, and at the foot of the steep and lofty 
sand-hills. Dunes and cove have disappeared together; the 
hills have been shot bodily into the bay, and the former harbour 
is now the business quarter of the city. Not a street can be 
built without cutting down a hill, or filling up a glen. Never 

N 



1 78 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxii. 

was a great town built under heavier difficulties ; but trade 
requires it to be exactly where it is, and there it will remain and 
grow. Its former rivals, Vallejo and Benicia, are grass-grown 
villages, in spite of their having had the advantage of " a perfect 
situation." While the spot on which the Golden City stands 
Avas still occupied by the struggling village of Yerba Buena, 
Francisca was a rising city, where corner lots were worth their 
ten or twenty thousand dollars. When the gold rush came, the 
village, shooting to the front, voted itself the name of its great 
bay, and Francisca had to change its title to Benicia, in order 
not to be thought a mere suburb of San Francisco. The mouth 
of the Columbia was once looked to as the future haven of 
Western America, and point of convergence of the railroad 
lines ; but the " centre of the universe " has not more coiri- 
pletely removed from Independence to Fort Riley than Astoria 
has yielded to San Francisco the claim to be the port of the 
Pacific. 

The one great danger of this coast all its cities share in 
common. Three times within the present century, the spot 
on which San Francisco stands has been violently disturbed by 
subterranean forces. The earthquake of last year has left its 
mark upon Montgomery Street and the Plaza, for it frightened 
the San Franciscans into putting up light wooden cornices to 
hotels and banks, instead of the massive stone projections that 
are common in the States ; otherwise, though lesser shocks are 
daily matters, the San Franciscans have forgotten the " great 
scare." '^ A year is a long time in California. There is little 
of the earliest San Francisco left, though the city is only 
eighteen years old. Fires have done good work as well as 
harm, and it is worth a walk up to the Plaza to see how prim 
and starched are the houses which now occupy a square three 
sides of which were, in 1850, given up to the public gaming- 
hells. 

One of the few remaining bits of old Golden City life is to be 
found in the neighbourhood of the " What Cheer House," the 
resting-place of diggers on their way from the interior to take 
ship for New York or Europe. Here there is no lack of coin, 

* Since this was written the Lower Town has been destroyed by the 
earthquake of 1868. 



CHAP. XXII.] GOLDEN CITT, i-;^ 

no want of oaths, no scarcity of drinks. " Juleps " are as 
plentiful as in Baltimore itself; Yerba Buena, the old name for 
San Francisco, means " mint." 

If the old character of the city is gone, there are still odd 
scenes to be met with in its streets. To-day I saw a master 
builder of great wealth with his coat and waistcoat off, and 
his hat stowed away on one side, carefully teaching a raw Irish 
lad how to lay a brick. He told me that the acquisition of the 
art would bring the man an immediate rise in his wages of 
from five to ten shillings a day. Unskilled labour, Mexican 
and Chinese, is plentiful enough, but white artisans are scarce. 
The want of servants is such, that even the wealthiest in- 
habitants live with their wives and families in hotels, to avoid 
the cost and trouble of an establishment. Those who have 
houses pay rough unkempt Irish girls from ;£6 to ;£8 a month, 
with board, " outings " when they please, and " followers " un- 
limited. 

The hotel boarding has much to do with the somewhat 
unwomanly manner of a few among the ladies of the newest 
States, but the effect upon the children is more marked than it 
is upon their mothers. To a woman of wealth, it matters, 
perhaps, but little whether she rules a household of her own, 
or boards in the first floor of some gigantic hostelry; but it 
does matter a great deal to her children, who, in the one case, 
have a home to play and work in, and who, in the other, play 
on the stairs or in the corridors, to the annoyance of every 
sojourner in the hotel, and never dream of work out of school- 
hours, or of solid reading that is not compulsory. The only 
one of the common charges brought against America in 
English society and in English books and papers that is 
thoroughly true, is the statement that American children, as a 
rule, are "forward," ill-mannered, and immioral. An American 
can scarcely be found who does not admit and deplore the 
fact. With the self-exposing honesty that is a characteristic of 
their nation, American gentlemen will talk by the hour of the 
terrible profligacy of the young New Yorkers. Boys, they tell 
you, who in England would be safe in the lower school at 
Eton or in well-managed houses, in New York or New Orleans 
are deep gamesters and God-defying rowdies. In new Eng- 

* N 2 



i8o GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxii. 

land, things are better; in the West, there is yet time to 
prevent the ill arising ; but even in the most old-fashioned of 
American States, the children are far too full of self-assurance". 
Their faults are chiefly faults of manner, but such m children 
have a tendency to become so many vices. On my way home 
from Egypt, I crossed the Simplon with a Southerner and a 
Pennsylvanian boy of fourteen or fifteen. An English boy 
would have expressed his opinion, and been silent : this lad's 
attacks upon the poor Southerner were unceasing and unfeel- 
ing ; yet I could see that he was good at bottom. I watched 
my chance to give him my view of his conduct, and when we 
parted, he came up and shook hands, saying : " You're not a 
bad fellow for a Britisher, after all." 

In my walks through the city, I found its climate agreeable 
rather for work than idleness. Sauntering or lounging is as 
little possible as it is in London. The summer is not yet 
ended ; and in the summer at San Francisco, it is cold after 
eleven in the day— strangely cold for the latitude of Athens. 
The fierce sun scorches up the valleys of the San Joaquin and 
the Sacramento in the early morning; and the heated air, 
rising from off the ground, leaves its place to be filled by the 
cold breeze from' the Pacific. The Contra Costa Range is 
unbroken but by the single gap of the Golden Gate, and 
through this opening the cold winds rush in a never-ceasing 
gale, spreading fan-like as soon as they have passed the 
narrows. Hence it is that the Golden Gate is called " The 
Keyhole," and the wind " The Keyhole Breeze." Up country, 
they make it raise the water for irrigation. In winter, there is 
a calm, and then the city is as sunny as the rest of California. 

So purely local is the bitter gale, that at Benicia, ten miles 
from San Francisco, the mean temperature is ten degrees 
higher for the year, and nearly twenty for the summer. I have 
stood on the shore at Benicia when the thermometer was at a 
hundred in the shade, and seen the clouds pouring in from the 
Pacific, and hiding San Francisco in a murky pall, while the 
temperature there was under seventy degrees. This fog retarded 
by a hundred years the discovery of San Francisco Bay. The 
entrance to the Golden Gate is narrow, and the mists hang 
there all day. Cabrillo, Drake, Viscaino, sailed past it without 



CHAP. XXII.] GOLDEX CITY. i8r 

seeing that there was a bay, and the great land-locked sea was 
first beheld by white men when the missionaries came upon 
its arms and creeks, far away inland. 

The peculiarity of climate carries with it great advantages. 
It is never too hot, never too cold, to work — a fact which of 
itself secures a grand future for San Francisco. The effect 
upon national type is marked. At a San Franciscan ball, you 
see English faces, not American. Even the lean Western men 
and hungry Yankees become plump and rosy in this temple of 
the winds. The high metallic ring of the New England voice is 
not found in San Francisco. As for old men, California m.ust 
have been that fabled province of Cathay the virtues of which 
were such that, whatever a man's age when he entered it, he 
never grew older by a day. To dogs and strangers there are 
drawbacks in the absence of winter : dogs are muzzled all the 
year round, and mosquitoes are perennial upon the coast. 

The city is gay with flags ; every house supports a Liberty 
pole upon its roof, for when the Union sentiment sprang up in 
San Francisco, at the beginning of the war, public opinion 
forced the citizens to make a conspicuous exhibition of the 
Stars and Stripes by way of showing that it was from no want 
of loyalty that they refused to permit the circulation of the 
Federal greenbacks. In this matter of flags, the sea-gale is of 
service, for were it not for its friendly assistance, a short house 
between tvvo tall ones could not sport a huge flag with much 
effect. ■ As it is, the wind always blowing across the chief 
streets, and never up or down, the narrowest and lowest house 
can flaunt a large ensign without fear of its ever flapping 
against the walls of its proud neighbours. 

It is not only in rosy cheeks that the Californian English 
have the old-world type. With less ingenuity than the New 
England Yankees, they have far more depth and solidity in 
their enterprise : they do not rack their brain at inventing 
machines to peel apples and milk cows, but they intend to 
tunnel through the mountains to Lake Tahoe, tap it, and A\dth 
its waters irrigate the Californian plains. They share our 
British love for cash payments and good roads ; they one and 
all set their faces against repudiation in any shape, and are 
strongly for what they call " rohing-up " the debt. Throughout 



i82 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxii. 

the war, they quoted paper as depreciated, not gold as risen. 
Indeed, there is here the same unreasoning prejudice against 
paper-money that I met with in Nevada. After all, what can 
be expected of a State which still produces three-eighths of all 
the gold raised yearly in the world. 

San Francisco is inhabited, as all American cities bid fair to 
be, by a mixed throng of men of all lands beneath the sun. 
New Englanders and Englishmen predominate in energy, 
Chinese in numbers. The French and Italians are stronger 
here than in any other city in the States ; and the red-skinned 
Mexicans, who own the land, supply the market people and a 
small portion of the townsfolk. Australians, Polynesians, and 
Chilians are numerous ; the Germans and Scandinavians alone 
are few ; they prefer to go where they have already friends — 
to Philadelphia or Milwaukee. In this city — already a micro- 
cosm of the world — the English, British, and American, are in 
possession — have distanced the Irish, beaten down the Chinese 
by force, and are destined to physically preponderate in the 
cross-breed, and give the tone, political and moral, to the 
Pacific shore. New York is Irish, Philadelphia German ; 
Milwaukee Norwegian ; Chicago Canadian ; Sault de Ste, Marie 
French ; but in San Francisco — where all the foreign races are 
strong — none is dominant ; whence the singular result that 
California, the most mixed in population, is also the most 
English of the States. 

In this strange community, starting more free from the 
Puritan influence of New England than has hitherto done any 
State within the Union, it is doubtful what religion will pre- 
dominate. Catholicism is "not fashionable" in America — it 
is the creed of the Irish, and that is enough for most Americans; 
so Anglicanism, its critics say, is popular as being " very 
proper." Whatever the cause, the Episcopalian Church is 
flourishing in California, and it seems probable that the Church 
which gains the day in California will eventually be that of the 
whole Pacific. 

On Montgomery Street are some of the finest buildings in 
all America ; the " Occidental Hotel," the " Masonic Hall," the 
" Union Club," and others. The club has only just been 
rebuilt after its destruction by a nitro-glycerine explosion which 



CHAP. XXII.] GOLDEN CIT7. rSj 

occurred in the express office next door. A case, of which no 
one knew the conteijts, was being Hfted by two clerks, when it 
exploded, blowing down a portion of the club, and breaking 
half the windows in the city. On examination it was found to 
be nitro-glycerine on its way to the mines. 

Another accident occurred here yesterday with this same 
compound. A sharp report was heard on board a ship lying 
in the docks, and the cook was found dead, below ; pieces of a 
flask had been driven into his heart and lungs. The deposit on 
the broken glass was examined, and found to be common oil ; 
but this morning, I read in the Alta a report from a chemist 
that traces of nitro-glycerine have been discovered by him 
upon the glass, and a statement from one of the hands says 
that the ship on her way up had called at Manzanilla, where 
the cook had taken the flask from a merchant's office, emptied 
it of its contents, the character of which was unknown to him, 
and filled it with common oil. 

Since the great explosion at Aspinwall, nitro-glycerine has 
been the nightmare of Californians. For earthquakes they 
care little, but the freaks of the devilish oil, which is brought 
here secretly, for use in the Nevada mines, have made them 
ready to swear that it is itself a demon. They tell you that it 
freezes every night, and then the slightest friction will explode 
it — that, on the other hand, it goes off if heated. If you leave 
it standing in ordinary temperatures, the odds are that it under- 
goes decomposition, and then, if you touch it, it explodes ; 
and no lapse of time has on its power the smallest deteriorating 
effect, but, on the contrary, the oil will crystallize,, and then its 
strength for harm is multiplied by ten. If San Francisco is 
ever destroyed by earthquake, old Californians will certainly 
be found to ascribe the shock to nitro-glycerine. 

A day or two after my return from Benicia, I escaped from 
the city, and again went South, halting at San Jose, " The 
Garden City," and chief town of the fertile Guadalupe district, 
on my way to the quicksilver mines of New Almaden, now the 
greatest in the world since they have beaten the Spanish mines 
and Idria. From San Jose, I drove myself to Almaden along 
a sun-dried valley with a fertile tawny soil, reaching the deli- 
cious mountain stream and the groves it feeds in time to join 



1 84 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxii. 

my friends at lunch in the shady hacienda. The director took 
me through the refining works, in which the quicksilver may be 
seen running in streams down gutters from the furnaces, but he 
was unable to go with me up the mountain to the mines from 
which the cinnabar comes shooting by its weight. The super- 
intendent engineer — a meerschaum-equipped Bavarian — and 
myself mounted, at the Hacienda Gate, upon our savage-looking 
beasts, and I found myself for the first time lost in the depths 
of a Mexican saddle, and my feet plunged into the boot-stirrups 
that I had seen used by the Utes in Denver. The riding feats 
of the Mexican and Californian boys are explained when you 
find that their saddle puts it out of the question that they 
should be thrown ; but the fatigue that its size and shape cause 
to man and horse, when the man is a stranger to New Spain, 
and the horse knows that he is so, outweighs any possible 
advantages that it may possess. With their huge gilt spurs, 
attached to the stirrup, not to the boot, the double peak, and 
the embroidered trappings, the Mexican saddles are the perfec- 
tion at once of the cumbersome and the picturesque. 

Silently we half scrambled, half rode, up a breakneck path 
which forms a short cut to the mine, till all at once a charge of 
our horses at an almost perpendicular wall of rock was followed 
by their simultaneously commencing to kick and back towards 
the cliff. Springing off, we found that the girths had been 
slackened by the Mexican groom, and that the steep bit of 
mountain had caused the saddles to slip. This broke the ice, 
and we speedily found ourselves discussing miners and mining 
in French, .my German not being much worse than the 
Bavarian's English. 

After viewing the mines, the walls of which, composed of 
crimson cinnabar, show bravely in the torchglare, I bade good- 
bye to what I could see of my German in the fog from his 
meerschaum, and turned to ride down by the road instead of 
the path. I had not gone a furlong, when, turning a corner, 
there burst upon me a view of the whole valley of tawny 
California, now richly golden in the colours of the fall. Looking 
from this spur of the Santa Cruz Mountains, with the Contra 
Costa Range before me, and Mount Hamilton towering from 
the plain, apart, I could discern below me the gleam of the 



CHAP. XXII.] GOLDEN CITT. 185 

Coyote Creek, and of the windows in the church of Santa 
Clara — in the distance, the mountains and waters of San 
Francisco Bay, from San Mateo to Alameda and San Pablo, 
basking in unhindered sun. The wild-oats dried by the heat 
made of the plain a field of gold, dotted here and there with 
groups of black oak and bay, and darkened at the mountain 
foot with " chapparal." The volcanic hills were rounded into 
softness in the delicious haze, and all nature overspread with a 
poetic calm. As I lost the view, the mighty fog was beginning 
to pour in through the Golden Gate to refresh America with 
dews from the Pacific. 



1 86 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xxiii. 



■ CHAPTER XXIII. 

Little China. 

"The Indians begin to be troublesome again in Trinity County. 
0?ie man and a Chinaman have been killed, and a lady crippled 
for life." 

That the antipathy everywhere exhibited by the English to 
coloured races was not less strong in California than in the 
Carolinas I had suspected, but I was hardly prepared for the 
deliberate distinction between men and yellow men drawn in 
this paragraph from the California Alta of the day of my 
return to San Francisco. 

A determination to explore Little China, as the celestial 
quarter of the city is termed, already arrived at, was only 
strengthened by the unconscious humour of the Alta^ and I at 
once set off in search of two of the detectives, Edes and Sauls- 
bury, to whom I had some sort of introduction, and put myself 
under their charge for the night. 

We had not been half-an-hour in the Chinese theatre or 
opera-house before my detectives must have repented of their 
offer to " show me around," for, incomprehensible as it seemed 
to them with their New England gravity and American con- 
tempt for the Chinese, I was amused beyond measure with the 
performance, and fairly lost myself in the longest laugh that I 
had enjoyed since I had left the plantations of Virginia. 

When we entered the house, which is the size of the Strand 
Theatre of London, it may have been ten or eleven o'clock. 
The performance had begun at seven, and was likely to last 
till two A.M. By the " performance " was meant this particular 
act or scene, for the piece had been going on every evening for 
a month, and would be still in progress during the best part of 



CHAP, xxiii.] LITTLE CHIXA. 187 

another, it being the principle of the Chinese drama to take up 
the hero at an early age, and conduct him to the grave — which 
he reaches full of years and of honour. 

The house Avas crammed with a grinning crowd of happy 
" yellow-boys," while the " China ladies " had a long gallery to 
themselves. No sound of applause is to be heard in a Chinese 
place of amusement, but the crowd grin delight at the actors, 
who, for their part, grin back at the crowd. 

The feature of the performance which struck me at once 
was the hearty interest the actors took in the play, and the 
chaff that went on between them and the pit ; it is not only 
from their numbers and the nature of their trades that the 
Chinese may be called the Irish of the Pacific : there was soul 
in every gesture. 

On the stage, behind the actors, was a band, which played 
unceasingly, and so loud, that the performers, who clearly had not 
the smallest intention of subordinating their parts to the music, 
had to talk in shrieks in order to be heard. The audience, too, 
all talked in their loudest natural tones. 

As for the play, a lady made love to an old gentleman (pro- 
bably the hero, as this was the second month or third act of 
the play), and, bawling at him fiercely, was indignantly rejected 
by him in a piercing shriek. Relatives, male and female, 
coming with many howls to the assistance of the lady, were 
ignominiously put to flight, in a high falsetto key, by the old 
fellow's footmen, who were in turn routed by a force of yelling 
spearmen, apparently the county posse. The soldiers wore 
paint in rings of various colours, put on so deftly, that of nose, 
of eyes, of mouth, no trace could be discovered ; the front face 
resembled a target for archery. All this time, a steady unceas- 
ing uproar was continued by four gongs and a harp, with various 
C}Tnbals, pavilions, triangles, and guitars. 

Scenery there was none, but boards were put up in the 
Elizabethan way, with hieroglyphics denoting the supposed 
locality ; and another archaic point is, that all the female parts 
were played by boys. For this I have the word of the detec- 
tives ; my eyes, had I not long since ceased to befieve them, 
would have given me proof to the contrary. 

The acting, so far as I could judge by the grimace, was ex- 



i88 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xxiii. 

cellent. Nowhere could be found greater spirit, or equal power 
of facial expression. The stage fight was full of pantomimic 
force ; the leading soldier would make his fortune as a London 
pantoloon. 

When the detectives could no longer contain their distaste 
for the performance, we changed our quarters for a restaurant — 
the " Hang Heong," the wood of which was brought from 
China. 

The street along which we had to pass was decorated rather 
than lit by paper lanterns hung over every door; but the 
" Hang Heong " was brilliantly illuminated, with a view, no 
doubt, to attracting the crowd as they poured out from the 
theatre at a later hour. The ground-floor was occupied by shop 
and kitchen, the dining-rooms being upstairs. The counter, 
which is on the plan of that in the houses of the Palais Royal, 
was presided over, not by a smiling woman, but by grave and 
pig-tailed gentlemen in black, who received our order from the 
detective with the decorous solemnity of the head waiter in an 
English country inn. 

The rooms upstairs were nearly full ; and as the Chinese by 
no means follow the Americans in silent eating, the Babel was 
tremendous. A saucer and a pair of chopsticks were given 
each of us, but at our request a spoon was furnished as a special 
favour to the " Melicans." 

Tiny cups of a sweet spirit were handed us before supper 
was brought up. The liquor was a kind of shrub, but white ; 
made, I was told, from sugar-canes. For first course, we had 
roast duck cut in pieces, and served in an oil-filled bowl, and 
some sort of fish ; tea was then brought in, and followed by 
shark's fin, for which I had given a special order ; the result 
might have been gum-arabic for any flavour I could find. Dog 
was not to be obtained, and birds'-nest soup was beyond the 
purse of a traveller seven thousand miles from home, and twelve 
thousand from his next supplies. A dish of some strange black 
fungus stewed in rice, followed by preserves and cakes, con- 
cluded our supper, and were washed down by our third cups 
of tea. 

After paying our respects and our money to the gentleman in 
black, who grunted a lugubrious something that answered to 



CHAP, xxiii.] LITTLE CHINA. 189 

"good-night," we paid a visit to the Chinese "bad quarter," 
which differs only in degree of badness from the " quartier 
Mexicain," the bad pre-eminence being ascribed, even by the 
prejudiced detectives, to the Spaniards and Chilenos. 

Hurrying on, we reached the Chinese gaming-houses^ just 
before they closed. Some difficulty was made about admitting 
us by the " yellow loafers " who hung round the gate, as the 
houses are prohibited by law ; but as soon as the detectives, 
who were known, explained that they came not on business but 
on pleasure, we were suffered to pass in among the silent 
melancholy gamblers. Not a word was heard, beyond every 
now and then a grunt from the croupier. Each man knew 
what he was about, and won or lost his money in the stillness 
of a dead-house. The game appeared to be a sort of loto ; but 
a few minutes of it was enough, and the detectives pretended 
to no deep acquaintance with its principles. 

The San Francisco Chinese are not all mere theatre-goers, 
loafers, gamblers ; as a body, they are frugal, industrious, con- 
tented men. I soon grew to think it a pleasure to meet a 
Chinese-American, so clean and happy is his look ; not a speck 
is to be seen upon the blue cloth of his long coat or baggy 
trousers. His hair is combed with care ; the bamboo on which 
he and his mate together carry their enormous load seems as 
though cleansed a dozen times a day. 

It is said to be a peculiarity of the Chinese that they are all 
alike : no European can, without he has dealings with them, 
distinguish one celestial from another. The same, however, 
may be said of the Sikhs, the Australian natives — of most 
coloured races, in short The points of difference which dis- 
tinguish the yellow men, the red men, the black men with 
straight hair, the negroes, from any other race whatever, are so 
much more prominent than the minor distinctions between Ah 
Sing and Chi Long, or between Uncle Ned and Uncle Tom, 
that the individual are sunk and lost in the national distinctions. 
To the Chinese in turn all Europeans are alike; but beneath 
these obvious facts, there lies a grain of solid truth that is worth 
the hunting out, and which is connected with the change-of-type 
question in America and Australasia. Men of similar habits of 
mind and body are alike among ourselves in Europe ; noted 



I90 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap, xxiii. 

instances are the close resemblance of Pere Enfantin, the St. 
Simonian chief, to the busts of Epicurus; of Bismarck to 
Cardinal Ximenes. Irish labourers — men who for the most 
part work hard, feed little, and leave their minds entirely un- 
ploughed — are all alike ; Chinamen, who all work hard, and 
work alike, who live alike, and who go further, and all think 
alike, are, by a mere law of nature, indistinguishable one from 
the other. 

In the course of my wanderings in the Golden City, I lighted 
on the house of the Canton Company, one of the Chinese 
benevolent societies, the others being those of Hong Kong, 
Macao, and Amoy. They are like the New York Immigration 
Commission, and the London " Societe Fran^aise de Bienfai- 
sance" combined ; added to a theatre and joss-house, or temple, 
and governed on the principles of such clubs as those of the 
" whites " or " greens" at Heidelberg, they are, in short, Chinese 
trades unions, sheltering the sick, succouring the distressed, 
finding work for the unemployed, receiving the immigrants from 
China when they land, and shipping their bones back to China, 
ticketed with name and address, when they die. " Hong Kong, 
with dead Chinamen," is said to be a common answer from 
outward-bounders to a hail from the guard-ship at the Golden 
Gate. 

Some of the Chinese are wealthy : Tung Yu & Co., Chi Sing 
Tong & Co., Wing Wo Lang & Co., Chy Lung & Co., stand 
high among the merchants of the Golden City. Honest and 
wealthy as these men are allowed to be, they are despised by 
every white Californian, from the Governor of the State to the 
Mexican boy who cleans his shoes. 

In America, as in Australia, there is a violent prejudice 
against John Chinaman. He pilfers, we are told ; he lies, he 
is dirty, he smokes opium, is full of bestial vices — a pagan, and 
— ^what is far more important— yellow ! All his sins are to be 
pardoned but the last. Californians, when in good humour, 
will admit that John is sober, patient, peaceable, and hard- 
working, that his clothes at least are scrupulously clean ; but he 
is yellow ! Even the Mexicans, themselves despised, look down 
upon the Chinamen, just as the New York Irish affect to have 
no dealings with " the naygurs." The Chinese themselves 



CHAP, xxiii.] . LITTLE CHINA. 191 

pander to the feeling. Their famous appeal to the Californian 
Democrats may or may not be true : " What for Democlat allee 
timee talkee dam Chinaman? Chinaman allee samee Demo- 
clat ; no likee nigger, no likee injun." " Infernals," " Celes- 
tials/' and " Greasers " — or black men, yellow men, and 
Mexicans — it is hard to say which are most despised by the 
American whites in California. 

The Chinaman is hated by the rough fellows for his cowardice. 
Had the Chinese stood to their rights against the Americans, 
they would long since have been driven from California. As it 
is, here and in Victoria they invariably give way, and never 
work at diggings which are occupied by whites. Yet in both 
countries they take out mining licences from the State, which is 
bound to protect them in the possession of the rights thus 
gained, but which is powerless against the rioters of Ballarat, or 
the " Anti-Chinese mob " of El Dorado. 

The Chinese in California are practically confined by public 
opinion, violence, or threats, to inferior kinds of _^work, which 
the " meanest " of the whites of the Pacific States refuse to 
perform. Politically, this is slavery. All the evils to which 
slavery has given rise in the cotton States are here produced by 
violence, in a less degree only because the Chinese are fewer 
than were the negroes. 

In spite of a prejudice which recalls the time when the British 
Government forbade the American colonist to employ negroes 
in the manufacture of hats, on the gi'ound that white labourers 
could not stand the competition, the yellow men continue to 
flock to " Gold Hills," as they call San Francisco. Already 
they are the washermen, sweepers, and porters of three States, 
two territories, and British Columbia. They are denied civil 
rights ; their word is not taken in cases where white men are 
concerned ; a heavy tax is set upon them on their entry to the 
State ; a second tax when they commence to mine — still their 
numbers steadily increase. In 1852, Governor Bigler, in his 
message, recommended the prohibition of the immigration of 
the Chinese, but they now number one-tenth of the population. 

The Irish of Asia, the Chinese, have commenced to flow over 
on to the outer world. Who shall say where the flow will 
stop ? Ireland, with now five millions of people, has in twenty 



192 G BEATER BRITAIN. [chap, xsiii. 

years poured an equal number out into the world. What is to 
prevent the next fifty years seeing an emigration of a couple of 
hundreds of millions from the rebellion-torn provinces of 
Cathay ? 

Three Chinamen in a temperate climate will do as much arm- 
work as two Englishmen, and will eat or cost less. It looks as 
though the cheaper would starve out the dearer race, as rabbits 
drive out stronger but hungrier hares. This tendency is already 
plainly visible in our mercantile marine : the ships are manned 
with motley crews of Bombay lascars, Maories, Negroes, Arabs, 
Chinamen, Kroomen, and Malays. There are no British or 
American seamen now, except boys who are to be quartermas- 
ters some day, and experienced hands who are quartermasters 
already. But there is nothing to regret in this : Anglo-Saxons 
are too valuable to be used as ordinary seamen where lascars 
will do nearly, and Maories quite as well. Nature seems to 
intend the English for a race of officers, to direct and guide the 
cheap labour of the Eastern peoples. 

The serious side of the Chinese problem — ^just touched on 
here — will force itself rudely upon our notice in Australia. 



r93 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

California. 

"In front of San Francisco are 745 millions of hungry Asiatics, 
who have spices to exchange for meat and grain." 

The words are Governor Gilpin's, made use of by him in 
discussing the future of overland trade, and worthy of notice as 
showing why it is that, in making forecasts of the future of 
California, we have to look more to her facilities for trade than 
to her natural productions. San Francisco aims at being, not 
so much the port of California as one of the main stations on 
the Anglo-Saxon highway round the globe. 

Although the chief claim of California to consideration is her 
position on the Pacific, her fertility and size alone entitle her 
to notice. This single State is 750 miles in length — would 
stretch from Chamouni to the southernmost point of Malta. 
There are two capes in California — one nearly in the latitude 
of Jerusalem, the other nearly in the latitude of Rome. The 
State has twice the area of Great Britain ; the single valley of the 
Joaquin and Sacramento, from Tulare Lake to the great snow- 
peak of Shasta, is as large as the three kingdoms. Every useful 
mineral, every kind of fertile soil, every variety of helpful climate 
are to be found within the State. There are in the Union forty- 
five such states or territories, with an average area equal to that 
of Britain. 

Three great tracts, each with its soil and character, lie be- 
tween the Pacific and the snows of the Sierra. On the slopes 
are the forests of giant timber, the sheltered valleys, and the 
gold-fields in which I spent my first week in California. Next 
comes the great hot plain of Sacramento, where, with irrigation, 
all the best fruits of the tropics grow luxuriantly, where water 

o 



194 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxiv. 

is plentiful, and the Pacific breeze will raise it to the surface. 
Round the valley are vast tracts for sheep and wheat, and on 
the Contra Costas are millions of acres of wild oats growing 
on the best of lands for cattle, while the slopes are covered with 
young vines. Between the Contra Costa Range and the sea 
is a winterless strip possessing for table vegetables and flowers 
the finest soil and climate in the world. The story goes that 
Californian boys, when asked if they believe in a future state, 
reply : " Guess so ; California." 

Whether San Francisco will grow to be a second Liverpool 
or New York is an all-absorbing question to those who live on 
the Pacific shores, and one not without an interest and a moral 
for ourselves. New York has waxed rich and huge mainly 
because she is so placed as to command one of the best har- 
bours on the coast of a country which exports enormously of 
bread-stuffs. Liverpool has thrived as one of the shipping ports 
for the manufactures of the northern coal counties of England. 
San Francisco Bay, as the best harbour south of Puget Sound, 
is, and will remain, the centre of the export trade of the Pacific 
States in wool and cereals. If coal is found in plenty in the 
Golden State^ population will increase, manufactures spring up, 
and the export of wrought articles take the place of that of 
raw produce. If coal is found in the Contra Costa Range, San 
Francisco will continue, in spite of earthquakes, to be the fore- 
most port on the Pacific side ; if, as is more probable, the find 
of coal is confined to the Monte Diablo district, and is of trifling 
value, still the future of San Francisco as the meeting point of 
the railways, and centre of the import of manufactured goods, 
and of the export of the produce of an agricultural and pastoral 
interior, is as certain as it must inevitably be brilliant. Whether 
the chief town of the Pacific States will in time develop into 
one of the commercial capitals of the world is a wider and a 
harder question. That it will be the converging point of the 
Pacific railroads both of Chicago and St. Louis there can be no 
doubt. That all the new overland trade from China and Japan 
will pass through it seems as clear ; it is the extent of this trade 
that is in question. For the moment, land transit cannot com- 
pete on equal terms with water carriage ; but assuming that, in 
the long run, this will cease to be the case, it will be the over- 




EL CAPITAX, YOSEMITE VALLEY. 



O 2 



CHAP. XXIV.] CALIFORNIA. 197 

land route across Russia, and not that through the United 
States, that will convey the silks and teas of China to Central 
and Western Europe. The very arguments of which the Califor- 
nian merchants make use to show that the delicate goods of China 
need land transport go to prove that shipping and unshipping 
in the Pacific, and a repetition in the Atlantic of each process, 
cannot be good for them. The political importance tq America 
of the Pacific railroads does not admit of over-statement; 
but the Russian or English Pacific routes must, commercially 
speaking, win the day. For rare and costly Eastern goods, the 
English Railway through Southern China, Upper India, the 
Persian coast, and the Euphrates is no longer now a dream. 
If Russian bureaucracy takes too long to move, trade will be 
diverted by the Gulf route ; coarser goods and food will long 
continue to come by sea, but in no case can the city of San 
Francisco become a western outport of Europe. 

The lustre of the future of San Francisco is not dimmed by 
considerations such as these ; as the port of entry for the trade 
of America with all the East, its wealth must become enormous ; 
and if, as is probable, Japan, New Zealand, and New South 
Wales grow to be manufacturing communities, San Francisco 
must needs in time take rank as a second, if not a greater, 
London. This, however, is the more distant future. With 
cheaper labour than the Pacific States and the British colonies 
possess, with a more settled government than Japan — Penn- 
sylvania and Ohio, from the time that the Pacific railroad is 
completed, will take, and for years will keep, the China trade. 
As for the colonies, the voyage from San Francisco to Australia 
is almost as long and difficult as that from England, and there 
is every probability that Lancashire and Belgium will continue 
to supply the colonists with clothes and tools, until they them- 
selves, possessed as they are of coal, become competent to 
make them. The merchants of San Francisco will be limited 
in the main to the trade with China and Japan. In this direc- 
tion the future has no bounds : through California and the 
Sandwich Islands, through Japan, fast becoming American, and 
China, the coast of which is already British, our race seems 
marching westward to universal rule. The Russian empire 
itself, with all its passive strength, cannot stand against the 



198 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxiv. 

English horde, ever pushing with burning energy towards the 
setting sun. Russia and England are said to be nearing each 
other upon the Indus ; but long before they can meet there, 
they will be face to face upon the Amoor. 

For a time, the flood may be diverted south or north : Mexico 
will doubtless, and British Columbia will probably, carry off a 
portion of the thousands who are pouring west from the bleak 
rocks of New England. The Californian expedition of 1853 
against Sonora and Lower California will be repeated with 
success, but the tide will be but momentarily stayed. So 
entirely are Enghsh countries now the mother-lands of energy 
and adventure throughout the world, that no one who has 
watched what has happened in California, in British Columbia, 
and on the west coast of New Zealand, can doubt that the 
discovery of placer gold-fields in any sea-girt countr)' in the 
world, must now be followed by the speedy rise there of an 
English government : were gold, for instance, found in surface 
diggings in Japan, Japan would be English in five years. We 
know enough of Chili, of the new Russian country on the 
Amoor, and of Japan, to be aware that such discoveries are 
more than likely to occur. 

In the face of facts like these, men are to be found who ask 
whether a break-up of the Union is not still probable — whether 
the Pacific States are not likely to secede from the Atlantic ; 
some even contend for the general principle that "America 
must go to pieces — she is too big." It is small powers, not 
great ones, that have become impossible : the unification of 
Germany is in this respect but the dawn of a new era. The 
great countries of to-day are smaller than were the smallest of a 
hundred years ago. Lewes was farther from London in 1700 
than Edinburgh is now. New York and San Francisco will in 
1870 be nearer to each other than Canton and Pekin. From 
the point of view of mere size, there is more likelihood of 
England entering the Union than of California seceding from it. 

The material interests of the Pacific States will always lie in 
union. The West, sympathising in the main with the Southern- 
ers upon the slavery question, threw herself into the war, and 
crushed them, because she saw the necessity of keeping her 
outlets under her own control. The same policy would hold 



CHAP. XXIV.] CALIFORNIA. i99 

good for the Pacific States in the case of the continental rail- 
road. America, of all countries, alone shares the future of both 
Atlantic and Pacific, and she knows her interests too well to 
allow such an advantage to be thrown away. Uncalculating 
rebellion of the Pacific States upon some sudden heat, is the 
only danger to be apprehended, and such a rising could be put 
down with ease, owing to the manner in which these States are 
commanded from the sea. Throughout the late rebellion, the 
Federal navy, though officered almost entirely by Southerners, 
was loyal to the flag, and it would be so again. In these days, 
loyalty may be said to be peculiarly the sailor's passion : 
perhaps he loves his country because he sees so little of it. 

The single danger that looms in the more distant future is 
the eventual control of Congress by the Irish, while the English 
retain their hold on the Pacific shores. 

^ 1^ ^ ^ ^ 

California is too British to be typically American : it would 
seem that nowhere in the United States have we found the true 
America or the real American. Except as abstractions, they do 
not exist ; it is only by looking carefully at each eccentric and 
irregular America — at Irish New York, at Puritan New England, 
at the rowdy South, at the rough and swaggering Far West, at 
the cosmopolitan Pacific States — that we come to reject the 
anomalous features, and to find America in the points they 
possess in common. It is when the country is left that there 
rises in the mind an image that soars above all local prejudice — 
that of the America of the law-abiding, mighty people who are 
imposing English institutions on the world. 



200 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxv. 



CHAPTER xxv. 

Mexico. 

In company with a throng of men of all races, all tongues, and 
all trades, such as a Californian steamer can alone collect, I came 
coasting southwards under the cliffs of Lower California. Of 
the thousand passengers who sought refuge from the stifling 
heat upon the upper and hurricane decks, more than half were 
diggers returning with a " pile " to their homes in the Atlantic 
States. While we hung over the bulwarks watching the bonitos 
and the whales, the shaggy-bearded diggers threw " bolas " at 
the boobies that flew out to us from the blazing rocks, and 
brought them down screaming upon the decks. Threading our 
way through the reefs off the lovely Island of Margarita, where 
the " Independence " was lost with three hundred human beings, 
we lay-to at Cape St. Lucas, and landed his Excellency Don 
Antonio Pedrin, Mexican Governor of Lower Cahfornia, and a 
Juarez man, in the very bay where Cavendish lay in wait for 
months for the "great Manilla ship" — the Acapulco galleon. 

When Girolamo Benzoni visited the Mexican Pacific coast, 
he confused the turtle with the " crocodile," describing the 
former under the latter's name ; but at Manzanilla, the two 
may be seen lying almost side by side upon the sands. Sepa- 
rated from the blue waters of the harbour by a narrow strand 
there is a festering lagoon, the banks of which swarm with 
the smaller alligators ; but a few yards off, upon the other 
slope, the townsfolk and the turtles they had brought down for 
sale to our ship's purser were lying, when I saw them, in a con- 
fused heap under an awning of sail-cloth nailed up to the palm- 
trees. Alligator, turtle, Mexican, it was hard to say which 
was the superior being. A French corvette was in possession 



CHAP. XXV.] MEXICO. lot" 

of the port — one of the last of the holding-places through 
which the remnants of the army of occupation were dribbling 
back to France. 

In the land-locked bay of Acapulco, one of the dozen " hot- 
test places in the world," we found two French frigates, whose 
officers boarded us at once. They told us that they landed 
their marines every morning after breakfast, and re- embarked 
them before sunset ; they could get nothing from the shore but 
water ; the Mexicans, under Alvarez, occupied the town at 
night, and carried off even the fruit. I asked about supplies, 
and the answer was sweeping : " Ah, mon Dieu, monsieur, cette 
ssacrrrkee canaille de Alvarez nous vole tout. Nous n'avons 
que de I'eau fraiche, et Alvarez va nous emporter la fontaine 
aussi quelque nuit. Ce sont des voleurs, voyez-vous, ces Mechi- 
canos." When they granted us leave to land, it was with the 
proviso that we should not blame them if we were shot at by 
the Mexicans as we went ashore, and by themselves as we came 
off again. Firing often takes place at night between Alvarez 
and the French, but with a total loss in many months of only 
two men killed. 

The day of my visit to Acapulco was the anniversary of the 
issue, one year before, of Marshal Bazaine's famous order of 
the day, directing the instant execution, as red-handed rebels, 
of Mexican prisoners taken by the French. It is a strange 
commentary upon the Marshal's circular that in a year from its 
issue the "Latin empire in America" should have had a term 
set to it by the President of the United States. In Canada, 
in India, in Egypt, in New Zealand, the English have met the 
French abroad, and in this Mexican affair history does but 
repeat itself. There is nothing more singular to the Londoner 
than the contempt of the Americans for France. All Europe 
seems small when seen from the United States ; but the opinion 
of Great Britain and the strength of Russia are still looked on 
with some respect : France alone completely vanishes, and 
instead of every one asking, as with us, "What does the 
Emperor say?" no one cares in the least what Napoleon does 
or thinks. In a Chicago paper, I have seen a column of 
Washington news headed, " Seward orders Lewis Napoleon to 
leave Mexico right away ! Nap. lies badly to get out of the 



202 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxv. 

fix !" While the Americans are still, in a high degree, suscep- 
tible of affront from England, and would never, if they con- 
ceived themselves purposely insulted, stop to weigh the cost of 
war, towards France they only feel, as a Californian said to me, 
" Is it worth our while to set to work to whip her?" The effect 
of Gettysburg and Sadowa will be that, except Great Britain, 
Italy, and Spain, no nations will care much for the threats or 
praises of Imperial France. 

The true character of the struggle in Mexico has not been 
pointed out. It was not a mere conflict between the majority 
of the people and a minority supported by foreign aid, but an 
uprising of the Indians of the country against the whites of the 
chief town. The Spaniards of the capital were Maximilian's 
supporters, and upon them the Indians and Mestizos have 
visited their revenge for the deeds of Cortez and Pizarro. On 
the west coast there is to be seen no trace of Spanish blood : 
in dress, in language, in religion, the people are Iberian ; in 
features, in idleness, and in ferocity, undoubtedly Red-Indian. 

In the reports of the Argentine Confederation, it is stated 
that the Caucasian blood comes to the front in the mixed race ; 
a few hundred Spanish families in La Plata are said to have 
absorbed several hundred thousand Indians, without suffering 
in their whiteness or other national characteristics. There is 
something of the frog that swallowed the ox in this ; and the 
theories of the Argentine officials, themselves of the mixed 
race, cannot outweigh the evidence of our own eyes in the sea- 
port towns of Mexico. There at least it is the Spaniards, not 
the Indians, who have disappeared ; and the only mixture of 
blood that can be traced is that of Red Indian and negro, in 
the fisher-boys about the ports. They are lithe lads, with eyes 
full of art and fire. 

The Spaniards of Mexico have become Red Indians, as the 
Turks of Europe have become Albanians or Circassians. Where 
the conquering marries into the conquered race, it ends by 
being absorbed, and the mixed breed gradually becomes pure 
again in the type of the more numerous race. It would seem 
that the North American continent will soon be divided between 
the Saxon and the Aztec republics. 

In California I once met with a caricature in which Uncle 



CHAP. XXV.] . MEXICO. 203 

Sam or Brother Jonathan is lying on his back upon Canada 
and the United States, with his head in Russian America, and 
his feet against a tumble-down fence, behind which is Mexico. 
His knees are bent, and his position cramped. He says, " Guess 
I shall soon have to stretch my legs, sonieP' There is not in 
the United States any strong feeling in favour of the annexation 
of the remainder of the continent, but there is a solemn deter- 
mination that no foreign country shall in any way gain fresh 
footing or influence upon American soil, and that monarchy 
shall not be established in Mexico or Canada. Further than 
this, there is a belief that, as the south central portions of the 
States become fully peopled up, population will pour over into 
the Mexican provinces of Chihuahua and Sonora, and that 
the annexation of these and some other portions of Mexico to 
the United States cannot long be prevented. For such acqui- 
sitions of territory America would pay as she paid in the case 
of Texas, which she first conquered, and then bought at a fair 
price. 

In annexing the whole of Mexico, Protestant Americans 
would feel that they were losing more than they could gain. In 
California and New Mexico, they have already to deal with a 
population of Mexican Catholics, and difficulties have arisen in 
the matter of the Church lands. The Cathohc vote is powerful 
not only in California and New York, but in Maryland, in 
Louisiana, in Kansas, and even in Massachusetts. The sons of 
the Pilgrim Fathers would scarcely look with pleasure on the 
admission to the Union of ten millions of Mexican Catholics, 
and, on the other hand, the day dreams of Leonard Calvert 
would not be realized in the triumph of such a Catholicism as 
theirs any more than in the success of that of the Philadelphia 
Academy, or New York Tammany Hall. 

With the exception of the Irish, the great majority of 
Catholic emigrants avoid the United States, but the migration 
of European Catholics to South America is increasing year by 
year. Just as the Germans, the Norwegians, and the Irish flow 
towards the States, the French, the Spanish, and the Italians 
flock into La Plata, Chili, and Brazil. The European population 
of La Plata has already reached three hundred thousand, and 
is growing fast. The French " mission " in Mexico was the 



204 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxv. 

making of that great country a further field for the Latin immi- 
gration ; and when the Cahfornians marched to Juarez' help, it 
was to save Mexico to North America. 

In all history, nothing can be found more dignified than the 
action of America upon the Monroe doctrine. Since the prin- 
ciple was first laid down in words, in 1823, the national beha- 
viour has been courteous, consistent, firm ; and the language 
used now that America is all-powerful, is the same that her 
statesmen made use of during the rebellion in the hour of her 
most instant peril. It will be hard for political philosophers of 
the future to assert that a democratic republic can have no 
foreign policy. 

The Pacific coast of Mexico is wonderfully full of beauties of 
a peculiar kind ; the sea is always calm, and of a deep dull blue, 
with turtles lying basking on the surface, and flying-fish skim- 
ming lightly over its expanse, while the shores supply a fringe 
of bright yellow sand at once to the ocean blue and to the rich 
green of the cactus groves. On every spit or sand-bar there 
grows the feathery palm. A low range of jungle-covered hills 
is cut by gullies, through which we get glimpses of lagoons 
bluer than the sea itself, and behind them the sharp volcanic 
peaks rise through and into cloud. Once in a while, Colima, 
or other giant hill, towering above the rest in blue-black gloom, 
serves to show that the shores belong to some mightier continent 
than Calypso's isle. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

Republican or Democrat. 

Among our Californian passengers, we had many strong party 
men, and political conversation never flagged throughout the 
voyage. In every discussion it became more and more clear 
that the Democratic is the Constitutional, the Republican the 
Utilitarian party — rightly called " Radical," from its habit of 
going to the root of things, to see whether they are good or 
bad. Such, however, is the misfortune of America in the pos- 
session of a written Constitution, such the reverence paid to that 
document on account of the character of the men who penned it, 
that even the extremest Radicals dare not admit in public that 
they aim at essential change, and the party loses, in consequence, 
a portion of the strength that attaches to outspoken honesty. 

The President's* party at their convention — known as the 
"Wigwam" — which met while I was in Philadelphia, maintained 
that the war had but restored the "Union as it was," with State 
rights unimpaired. The Republicans say that they gave their 
blood for the " Union as it was Jiot ; " for one nation, and not 
for thirty-six, or forty-five. The Wigwam declared that the 
Washington Government had no constitutional right to deny 
representation in Congress to any State. The Republicans 
asked how, if this constitutional provision was to be observed, 
the Government of the country was to be carried on. The 
Wigwam laid it down as a principle, that Congress has no 
power to interfere with the right possessed by each State to 
prescribe qualifications for the elective franchise. The Radicals 
say that State sovereignty should have vanished when slavery went 
down, and ask how the South is to be governed consistently 

* President Johnson, of course. 



2o6 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. xxyi. 

with republicanism unless by negro suffrage, and how this is 
to be maintained except by Federal control over the various 
States — by abolition, in short, of the old Union, and creation 
of a new. The more honest among the Republicans admit 
that for the position which they have taken up they can find no 
warrant in the Constitution ; that, according to the doctrine 
which the " continental statesmen " and the authors of " The 
Federalist " would lay do^^m, were they living, thirty-five of the 
States, even if they were unanimous, could have no right to 
tamper with the constitution of the thirty-sixth. The answer 
to all this can only be, that were the Constitution to be closely 
followed, the result would be the ruin of the land. 

The Republican party have been blamed because their theory 
and practice alike tend towards a consolidation of power, and 
a strengthening of the hands of the Government at Washington. 
It is in this that lies their chief claim to support. Local govern- 
ment is an excellent thing ; it is the greatest of the inventions 
of our inventive race, the chief security for continued freedom 
possessed by a people already free. This local government is 
consistent with a powerful executive ; between the village 
municipality and Congress, between the Cabinet and the district 
council of select men, there can be no conflict : it is State 
sovereignty, and the pernicious heresy of primary allegiance to 
the State, that have already proved as costly to the Republic as 
they are dangerous to her future. 

It has been said that America, under the Federal system, 
unites the freedom of the small State with the power of the 
great ; but though this is true, it is brought about, not through 
the federation of the States, but through that of the townships 
and districts. The latter are the trae units to which the con- 
sistent Republican owes his secondary allegiance. It is, perhaps, 
only in the tiny New England States that Northern men care 
much about their commonwealth ; a citizen of Pennsylvania or 
New York never talks of his State, unless to criticise its legisla- 
ture. After all, where intelligence and education are universal, 
where a spirit of freedom has struck its roots into the national 
heart of a great race, there can be no danger in centralisation, 
for the power that you strengthen is that of the whole people, 
and a nation can have nothin,c^ to fear from itself 



CHAP. XXVI.] REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT. 207 

In watching the measures of the Radicals, we must remember 
that they have still to guard their country against great dangers. 
The "war did not last long enough to destroy anti-repubHcanism 
along with slavery. The social system of the Carolinas was 
upset ; but the political fabric built upon a slavery foundation 
in such " free " States as New York and Maryland is scarcely 
shaken. 

If we look. to the record of the Republican party with a view 
to making a forecast of its future conduct, we find that at the 
end of the war the party had before it the choice betw^een 
military rule and negro rule for the South — between a govern- 
ment carried on through generals and provost-marshals, unknown 
to the Constitution and to the courts, and destined to prolong 
for ages the disruption of the Union and disquiet of the nation, 
and, on the other hand, a rule founded upon the principles of 
equity and self-government, dear to our race, and supported by 
local majorities, not by foreign bayonets. Although possessed 
of the whole military power of the nation, the Republicans 
refused to endanger their country, and established a system 
intended to lead by gradual steps to equal suffrage in the South. 
The immediate interest of the party, as distinguished from that 
of the country at large, was the other w^ay. The Republican 
majority of the presidential elections of i860 and 1864, had 
been increased by the success of the Federal arms, borne mainly 
by the Republicans of New England and the West, in a war 
conducted to a triumphant issue under the leadership of Repub- 
lican Congress-men and generals. The apparent magnanimity 
of the admission of a portion of the rebels, warm-handed, to the 
poll, would still further have strengthened the Republicans in 
the Western and Border States ; and while the extreme wing 
would not have dared to desert the party, the moderate men 
would have been conciliated by the refusal of the franchise to 
the blacks. A foresight of the future of the nation happily pre- 
vailed over a more taking policy, and, to the honour of the 
Republican leaders, equal franchisee was the result. 

The one great issue between the Radicals and the Democrats 
at the conclusion of the war was this : the "Democracy" denied 
that the re-admissiont Congress of the representatives of the 
Southern States was a matter of expediency at all; to them they 



2o8 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. xxvi. 

declared that it was a matter of right. Either the Union was or 
was not dissolved ; the Radicals admitted that it was not, that 
all their endeavours were to prevent the Union being destroyed 
by rebels, and that they succeeded in so doing. The States, as 
States, were never in rebellion ; there was only a powerful 
rebelhon localised in certain States. " If you admit, then," said 
the Democrats, " that the Union is not dissolved, how can you 
govern a number of States by major-generals?" Meanwhile 
the Radicals went on, not wasting their time in words, but 
passing through the House and over the President's veto the 
legislation necessary for the reconstruction of free government — 
with their illogical, but thoroughly Enghsh good sense, avoiding 
all talk about constitutions that are obsolete, and laws that it 
was impossible to enforce, and pressing on steadily to the end 
that they have in view : equal rights for all men, free govern- 
ment as soon as may be. The one thing to regret is, that the 
Republicans have not the courage to appeal to the national 
exigencies merely, but that their leaders are forced by public 
opinion to keep up the sham of constitutionalism. No one in 
America seems to dream that there can be anything to alter in 
the " matchless Constitution," which was framed by a body of 
slave-owners filled with the narrowest aristocratic prejudices, for 
a country which has since abolished slavery, and become as 
democratic as any nation in the world. 

The system of presidential election and the constitution of 
the Senate are matters to which the Republicans will turn their 
attention as soon as the country is rested from the war. It is 
■not impossible that a lifetime may see the abolition of the 
Presidency proposed, and carried by the vote of the whole 
nation. If this be not done, the election will come to be made 
directly by the people, without the intervention of the electoral 
college. The Senate, as now constituted, rests upon the States, 
and that State-rights are doomed no one can doubt who re- 
members that of the population of New York State less than 
half are native-born New Yorkers. What concern can the 
cosmopolitan moiety of her people have with the State-rights of 
New York ? When a system becomes purely artificial, it is on 
the road to death ; when State-rights represented the various 
sovereign powers which the old States had allowed to sleep 



c.'TAP. XXVI.] REPUBLICAN OB DEMOCRAT. 209 

while they entered a federal union, State-rights were historical ; 
but now that Congress by a single vote cuts and carves territories 
as large as all the old States put together, and founds new 
commonwealths in the wilderness, the doctrine is worn out. • 

It is not likely that the Republicans will carry all before them 
without a check; but though one Conservative reaction may 
follow another, although time after time the Democrats may 
return victorious from the Fall elections, in the end Radicalism 
must inevitably win the day. A party which takes for its 
watchword, " The national good," will always beat the Consti- 
tutionalists. 

Except during some great crisis, the questions which come 
most home at election times in a democratic country are minor 
points, in which the party not in power has always the advan- 
tage over the office-holders : it is on these petty matters that a 
cry of jobbery and corruption can be got up, and nothing in 
American politics is more taking than such a cry. " We are a 
liberal people, sir," said a Californian to me, " but we don't 
care to see some men get more than their share of Uncle Sam's 
money. It doesn't go down at election time to say that the 
Democrats are spoiling the country ; but it's a mighty strong 
plank that you've got if you prove that Hank Andrews has 
made a million of dollars by the last Congressional job. We 
say, ' Smart boy. Hank Andrews ; ' but we generally vote for 
the other man." It is these small questions, or " side issues," 
as they are termed, which cause the position of parties to fluc- 
tuate frequently in certain States. The first reaction against 
the now triumphant Radicals will probably be based upon the 
indignation excited by the extension of Maine liquor la\^s 
throughout the whole of the States in which the New Englanders 
have the mastery. 

Prohibitive laws are not supported in America by the argu 
ments with which all of us in Britain are familiar. The New 
England Radicals concede that, so far as the effects of the use 
of alcohol are strictly personal, there is no ground for the in- 
terference of society. They go even further, and say that no 
ground for general and indiscriminate interference with the sale 
of liquor is to be found in the fact that drink maddens certain 
men, and causes them to commit crime. They are willing to 

p 



2IO GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxvi. 

admit that, were the evils confined to individuals, it would be 
their own affair ; but they attempt to show that the use of 
alcohol affects the condition, moral and physical, of the 
drinker's offspring, and that this is a matter so bound up with 
the general weal, that public interference may be necessary. It 
is the belief of a majority of the thinkers of New England that 
the taint of alcoholic poison is hereditary ; that the children of 
drunkards will furnish more than the ordinary proportion of 
great criminals ; that the descendants of habitual tipplers will 
be found to lack vital force, and will fall into the ranks of 
pauperism and dependence : not only are the results of morbid 
appetites, they say, transmitted to the children, but the appetites 
themselves descend to the offspring with the blood. If this be 
true, the New England Radicals urge, the use of alcohol becomes 
a moral wrong, a crime even, of which the law might well take 
cognizance. 

We are often told that party organization has become so 
dictatorial, so despotic in America, that no one not chosen by 
the preliminary convention, no one, in short, whose name is not 
upon the party ticket, has any chance of election to an ofHce. 
To those who reflect upon the matter, it would seem as though 
this is but a consequence of the existence of Party, and of 
the system of Local Representation : in England itself the 
like abuse is not unknown. Where neither party possesses 
overwhelming strength, division is failure ; and some knot or 
other of pushing men must be permitted to make the selection 
of a candidate, to which, when made, the party must adhere, 
or suffer a defeat. As to the composition of the nominating 
conventions, the grossest mis-statements have been made to 
us in England, for we have been gravely assured that a 
nation which is admitted to present the greatest mass of educa- 
tion and intelligence with the smallest intermixture of ignorance 
and vice of which the world has knowledge, allows itself to 
be dictated to in the matter of the choice of its rulers by 
caucuses and conventions composed of the idlest and most 
worthless of its population. Bribery, we have been told, 
reigns supreme in these assemblies ; the nation's interest is 
but a phrase ; individual selfishness the true dictator of each 
choice ; the name of party is but a cloak for private ends, and 



CHAP. XXVI.] REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT. 21 j 

the wire pullers are equalled in rascality only by their 
nominees. 

It need hardly be shown that, were these stories true, a 
people so full of patriotic sentiment as that which lately fur- 
nished a million and a half of volunteers for a national war, 
would without doubt be led to see its safety in the destruction 
of conventions and their wire-pullers — of party government 
itself, if necessary. It cannot be conceived that the American 
people would allow its institutions to be stultified and law 
itself insulted to secure the temporary triumph of this party or 
of that on any mere question of the day. 

The secret of the power of caucus and convention is, general 
want of time on the part of the community. Your honest and 
shrewd Western farmer, not having himself the leisure to select 
his candidate, is fain to let caucus or convention choose for him. 
In practice, however, the evil is far from great : the party 
caucus, for its own interest, will, on the whole, select the fittest 
candidate available, and, in any case, dares not, except perhaps in 
New York city, fix its choice upon a man of known bad character. 
Even where Party is most despotic, a serious mistake committed 
by one of the nominating conventions will seldom fail to lose 
its side so many votes as to secure a triumph for the opponents. 

King Caucus is a great monarch, however ; it would be a 
mistake to despise him, and conventions are dear to the 
American people — at least, it would seem so, to judge from their 
number. Since I have been in America, there have been sitting, 
besides doubtless a hundred others, the names of which I have 
not noticed, the Philadelphia " Copperjohnson Wigwam," or 
assembly of the Presidential party (of which the Radicals say 
that it is but " the Copperhead organization with a fresh 
snout"), a dentists' convention, a phrenological convention, a 
pomological congress, a school-teachers' convention, a Fenian 
convention, an eight-hour convention, an insurance companies' 
convention, and a loyal soldiers' convention. One is tempted 
to think of the assemblies of '48 in Paris, and of the carica- 
tures representing the young bloods of the Paris Jockey Club 
being addressed by their President as " Citoyens Vicomtes," 
whereas, Avhen the cafe waiters met in their congress, it was 
" Messieurs les Gargons-limonadiers." 

p 2 



212 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxvi. 

The pomological convention v/as an extremely jovial one? 
all the horticulturists being whisky-growers themselves, and 
having a proper wish to compare their own with their neigh- 
bours "Bourbon" or " old Rye." Caucuses (or cauci : which 
is it ?) of this kind suggest a derivation of this name for what 
many consider a low American proceeding, from an equally 
low Latin word of similar sound and spelling. In spite of the 
phrase " a dry caucus " being not unknown in the temperance 
State of Maine, many might be inclined to think that caucuses, 
if not exactly vessels of grace, were decidedly " drinking 
vessels ; " but Americans tell you that the word is derived from 
the phrase a " caulker's meeting," caulkers being peculiarly given 
to noise. 

The cry against conventions is only a branch of that 
against " politicians," which is continually being raised by the 
adherents of the side which happens at the m.oment to be 
the weaker, and which evidently helps to create the evils 
against which its authors are protesting. It is now the New 
York Democrats who tell such stories as that of the Columbia 
District census-taker going to the Washington house of a 
wealthy Boston man to find out his religious tenets. The 
door was opened by a black boy, to whom the white man 
began : " What's your name ?" " Sambo, sah, am my Chris- 
tian name." " Wall, Sambo, is your master a Christian ? " 
To which Sambo's indignant answer was : " No, sah ! Mass 
member ob Congress, sah !" When the democrats were in 
power, it was the Republicans of Boston and the Cambridge 
professors who threw out sly hints, and violent invectives too, 
against the whole tribe of "politicians." Such unreasoning 
outcries are to be met only by bare facts ; but were a jury 
of readers of the debates in Parliament and in Congress to be 
empanelled to decide whether political immorality were not 
more rife in England than in America, I should, for my part, 
look forward with anxiety to the result. 

The organization of the Republican party is hugely powerful ; 
it has its branches in every township and district in the 
Union; but it is strong, not in the wiles of crafty plotters, 
not in the devices of unknown politicians, but in the hearts 
of the loyal people of the country. If there were nothing else 



CHAP. XXVI.] REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT. 213 

to be said to Englishmen on the state of parties in America, 
it should be sufficient to point out that, while the " Democracy '' 
claim the Mozart faction of New York and the shoddy aris- 
tocracy, the pious New Englanders and their sons in the 
North-West are, by a vast majority, Republicans ; and no 
" side issues " should be allowed to disguise the fact that the 
Democratic is the party of New York, the Republican the 
party of America. 



214 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xxvii. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

Brothers. 

I HAD landed in America at the moment of what is known 
in Canada as " the great scare " — that is, the Fenian invasion 
at Fort Erie. Before going South, I had attended at New 
York a Fenian meeting held to protest against the conduct 
of the President and Mr. Seward, who, it was asserted, after 
deluding the Irish with promises of aid, had abandoned them, 
and even seized their supplies and arms. The chief speaker 
of the evening was Mr. Gibbons, of Philadelphia, "Vice- 
President of the Irish Republic," a grave and venerable man ; 
no rogue or schemer, but an enthusiast as evidently convinced 
of the justice as of the certainty of the ultimate triumph of 
the cause. 

At Chicago, I went to the monster meeting at which Speaker 
Colfax addressed the Brotherhood ; at Buffalo, I was present at 
the "armed picnic" which gave the Canadian Government so 
much trouble. On Lake Michigan, I went on board a Fenian 
ship ; in New York, I had a conversation with an ex-rebel 
officer, a long-haired Georgian, who was wearing the Fenian 
uniform of green-and-gold in the public streets. The conclu- 
sion to which I came was, that the Brotherhood has the support 
of ninety-nine hundredths of the Irish in the States. As we 
are dealing not with British, but with English politics and life, 
this is rather a fact to be borne in mind than a text upon 
which to found a homily ; still, the nature of the Irish antipathy 
to Britain is worth a moment's consideration ; and the probable 
effect of it upon the future of the race is a matter of the gravest 
import. 

The Fenians, according, to a Chicago member of the 



CHAP, sxvii.] BROTHERS. 215 

Roberts' wing, seek to return to the ancient state of Ireland, 
of which we find the history in the Brehon laws — a commu- 
nistic tenure of land (resembling, no doubt, that of the Don Cos- 
sacks), and a republic or elective kingship. Such are their 
objects ; nothing else will in the least conciliate the Irish in 
America. No abolition of the Establishment, no reform of 
land-laws, no Parliament on College Green, nothing that 
England can grant while preserving the shadow of union, can 
dissolve the Fenian league. 

All this is true, and yet there is another great Irish nation to 
which, if you turn, you find that conciliation may still avail us. 
The Irish in Ireland are not Fenians in the American sense : 
they hate us, perhaps, but they may be mollified ; they are dis- 
contented, but they may be satisfied ; customs and principles of 
law, the natural growth of the Irish mind and the Irish soil, 
can be recognised and made the basis of legislation without 
bringing about the disruption of the empire. 

The first Irish question that we shall have to set ourselves to 
understand is that of land. Permanent tenure is as natural to 
the Irish, as freeholding to the English people. All that is 
needed of our statesmen is, that they recognise in legislation 
that which they cannot but admit in private talk — namely, that 
there may be essential differences between race and race. 

The results of legislation which proceeds upon this basis may 
follow very slowly upon the change of system, for there is at 
present no nucleus whatever for the feeling of amity which we 
would create. Even the alliance of the Irish politicians with 
the English Radicals is merely temporary ; the Irish antipathy 
to the English does not distinguish between Conservative and 
Radical. Years of good government will be needed to create 
an alliance against which centuries of oppression and wrong- 
doing protest. We may forget, but the Irish will hardly find 
themselves able to forget at present, that, while we make New- 
Zealand savages British citizens as well as subjects, protect 
them in the possession of their lands, and encourage them to 
vote at our poihng-booths and take their place as constables and 
officers of the law, our fathers "planted" Ireland, and declared 
it no felony to kill an Irishman on his mother-soil. 

In spite of their possession of much political power, and of the 



2i6 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xxvii. 

entire city- government of several great towns, the Irish in 
America are neither physically nor morally well off. Whatever 
may be the case at some future day, they still find themselves 
politically in English hands. The very language that they are 
compelled to speak is hateful, even to men who know no other. 
With an impotent spite which would be amusing were it not 
very sad, a resolution was carried by acclamation through both 
houses of the Fenian congress, at Philadelphia, this year, "that 
the word ' English ' be unanimously dropped, and that the 
words ' American language ' be used in the future." 

From the Cabinet, from Congress, from every office, high or 
low, not controlled by the Fenian vote, the Irish are systemati- 
cally excluded ; but it cannot be American public opinion 
which has prevented the Catholic Irish from rising as merchants 
and traders, even in New York. Yet, while there are Belfast 
names high up on the Atlantic side and in San Francisco, there 
are none from Cork, none from the southern counties. It would 
seem as though the true Irishman wants the perseverance to 
become a successful merchant, and thrives best at pure brain- 
work, or upon land. Three-fourths of the Irish in America 
remain in towns, losing the attachment to the soil which is the 
strongest characteristic of the Irish in Ireland, and finding no 
new home : disgusted at their exclusion in America from poli- 
tical life and power, it is these men who turn to Fenianism as a 
relief Through drink, through gambling, and the other vices 
of homeless, thriftless men, they are soon reduced to beggary ; 
and, moral as they are by nature, the Irish are nevertheless 
supplying America with that which she never before possessed 
— a criminal and pauper class. Of ten thousand people sent 
to gaol each year in Massachusetts, six thousand are Irish born ; 
in Chicago, out of the 3598 convicts of last year, only eighty- 
four were native born Americans. 

To the Americans, Fenianism has many aspects. The 
greater number hate the Irish, but sympathise profoundly with 
Ireland. Many are so desirous of seeing republicanism prevail 
throughout the world that they support the Irish republic in any 
way, except, indeed, by taking its paper-money, and look upon 
its establishment as a first step towards the erection of a free 
government that shall include England and Scotland as well. 



CHAP. XXVII.] BROTHERS. 217 

Some think the Fenians will burn the Capitol and rob the 
banks ; some regard them with satisfaction, or the reverse, from 
the religious point of view. One of the latter kind of lookers- 
on said to me : "I was glad to see the Fenian movement, not 
that I wish success to the Brotherhood as against you English, 
but because I rejoice to see among Irishmen a powerful centre 
of resistance to the Catholic Church. We, in this country, were 
being delivered over, bound hand and foot, to the Roman 
Church, and these Fenians, by their power and their violence 
against the priests, have divided the Irish camp, and rescued 
us." The unfortunate Canadians, for their part, ask why they 
should be shot and robbed because Britain maltreats the Irish; 
but we must not forget that the Fenian raid on Canada was an 
exact repetition, almost on the same ground, of the St. Alban's 
raid into the American territory, during the rebellion. 

The Fenians would be as absolutely without strength in 
America as they are without credit were it not for the anti- 
British traditions of the Democratic party, and the rankling of 
the Alabama question, or rather of the remembrance of our 
general conduct during the rebellion, in the hearts of the Re- 
publicans. It is impossible to spend much time in New Eng- 
land without becoming aware that the people of the six North- 
Eastern States love us from the heart. Nothing but this can 
explain the character of their feeling towards us on these Ala- 
bama claims. That we should refuse an arbitration upon the 
whole question is to them inexplicable, and they grieve with 
wondering sorrow at our perversity. 

It is not here that the legal question need be raised ; for 
observers of the present position of the English race it is 
enough that there exists between Britain and America a bar 
to perfect friendship — a ground for future quarrel — upon 
which we refuse to allow an all-embracing arbitration.* We 
allege that we are the best judges of a certain portion of the 
case, that our dignity would be compromised by arbitration 
upon these points ; but such dignity must always be compro- 
mised by arbitration, for common friends are called in only 
when each party to the dispute has a case, in the justice of 

* Although the arbitration now seems certain to take place (Feb. 1869), 
there is still a disposition to except froirr it one portion of our national acts. 



218 GBEATEB BRITAIN. [chap, xxvii. 

which his dignity is bound up. Arbitration is resorted to as a 
means of avoiding wars ; and, dignity or no dignity, everything 
tliat can cause war is proper nriatter for arbitration. What even 
if some httle dignity be lost by the affair, in addition to that 
which has been lost already ? No such loss can be set against 
the frightful hurtfulness to the race and to the cause of freedom, 
of war between Britain and America. 

The question comes plainly enough to this point : we say we 
are right ; America says we are wrong ; they offer arbitration, 
which we refuse upon a point of etiquette — for on that ground 
we decline to refer to arbitration a point which to America 
appears essential. It looks to the world as though we offer to 
submit to the umpire chosen those points only on which we are 
already prepared to admit that we are in the wrong. America 
asks us to submit, as we should do in private life, the whole 
correspondence on which the quarrel stands. Even if we, 
better instructed in the precedents of international law than were 
the Americans, could not but be in the right, still, as we know 
that intelligent and able men in the United States think other- 
wise, and would fancy their cause the just one in a war which 
might arise upon the difficulty, surely there is ground for arbi- 
tration. It would be to the eternal disgrace of civilization that 
we should set to work to cut our brothers' throats upon a point 
of etiquette ; and, by declining on the ground of honour to 
discuss these claims, we are compromising that honour in the 
eyes of all the world. 

In democracies such as America or France, every citizen 
feels an insult to his country as an insult to himself. The Ala- 
bama question is in the mouth or in the heart — which is worse 
— of every American who talks with an Englishman in England 
or America. 

All nations commit, at times, the error of acting as though 
they think that every people on earth, except themselves, are 
unanimous in their policy. Neglecting the race distinctions 
and the class distinctions which in England are added to the 
universal essential differences of mmds, the Americans are con- 
vinced that, during the late war, we thought as one man, and 
that, in this present matter of the Alabama claims, we stand 
out and act as a united people. 



CHAP, xxvii.] BROTHERS. 219 

A New Yorker with whom I stayed at Quebec — a shrewd 
but kindly fellow — was an odd instance of the American inca- 
pacity to understand the British nation, which almost equals our 
own inability to comprehend America. Kind and hospitable 
to me, as is any American to every Englishman in all times and 
places, he detested British policy, and obstinately refused to see 
that there is an England larger than Downing Street, a nation 
outside Pall Mall. " England was with the rebels throughout 
the war." " Excuse me ; our ruling classes were so, perhaps, 
but our rulers don't represent us any more than your 39th 
Congress represents George Washington." In America, where 
Congress does fairly represent the nation, and where there has 
never been less than a quarter of the body favourable to any 
policy which half the nation supported, men cannot understand 
that there should exist a country which thinks one way, but, 
through her rulers, speaks another. We may disown the 
national policy, but we suffer for it. 

The hospitality to Englishmen of the American England-hater 
is extraordinary. An old Southerner in Richmond said to me, 
in a breath : " I'd go and live in England if I didn't hate it as I do. 
England, sir, betrayed us in the most scoundrelly way — talked 
of sympathy with the South, and stood by to see us swallowed 
up. I hate England, sir ! Come and stay a week with me at my 

place in county. Going South to-day ? Well, then, you 

return this way next week. Come then ! Come on Saturday week." 

When we ask, "Why do you press the Alabama claims 
against us, and not the Florida, the Georgia, and the Rappa- 
hannock claims against the French?" the answer is : "Because 
we don't care about the French, and what they do and think ; 
besides, we owe them some courtesy after bundling them out of 
Mexico in the way we did." In truth there is amongst Ameri- 
cans an exaggerated estimate of the offensive powers of Great 
Britain ; and such is the jealousy of young nations, that this 
exaggeration becomes, of itself, a cause of danger. Were the 
Americans as fully convinced, as we ourselves are, of our total 
incapacity to carry on a land-war with the United States on the 
western side of the Atlantic, the bolder spirits among them 
would cease to feel themselves under an assumed necessity to 
show us our own weakness and their strength. 



2 20 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xxvii. 

The chief reason why America finds much to offend her in 
our conduct is, that she cares for the opinion of no other people 
than the Enghsh. Before the terrible blow to her confidence 
and love that our conduct during the rebellion gave, America 
used morally to lean on England. Happily for herself, she is 
now emancipated from the mental thraldom ; but she still 
yearns towards our kindly friendship. A Napoleonic senator 
harangues, a French paper declaims, against America and 
Americans ; who cares ? But a Times' leader, or a speech in 
Parliament from a minister of the Crown, cuts to the heart, 
wounding terribly. A nation, like an individual, never quarrels 
with a stranger ; there must be love at bottom for even queru- 
lousness to arise. While I was in Boston, one of the foremost 
writers of America said to me in conversation : " I Imve no 
son, but I had a nephew of my own name ; a grand fellow ; 
young, handsome, winning in his ways, full of family aff'ections, 
an ardent student. He felt it his duty to go to the front as a 
private in one of our regiments of Massachusetts volunteers, 
and was promoted for bravery to a captaincy. All of us here 
looked on him as a New England Philip Sydney, the type of 
all that was manly, chivalrous, and noble. The very day that 
I received news of his being killed in leading his company 
against a regiment, I was forced by my duties here to read a 
leader in one of your chief papers upon the officering of our 
army, in which it was more than hinted that our troops con- 
sisted of German cut-throats and pot-house Irish, led by sharpers 
and broken politicians. Can you wonder at my being bitter ?" 

That there must be in America a profound feeling of affection 
for our country is shown by the avoidance of war when we re- 
cognised the rebels as belligerents ; and, again, at the time of 
the " Trent " afiair, when the surface cry was overwhelmingly 
for battle, and the Cabinet only able to tide it over by promising 
the West war with England as soon as the rebellion was put 
down. " One war at a time, gentlemen," said Lincoln. The 
man who, of all in America, had most to lose by war with 
England, said to me of the " Trent " affair : " I was written to 

by C to do all I could for peace. I wrote him back that 

if our Attorney-General decided that our seizure of the men 
was lawful, I would spend my last dollar in the cause." 



CHAP. XX VII.] BROTHERS. 221 

The Americans, everywhere affectionate towards the indivi- 
dual Englishman, make no secret of their feeling that the first 
advances towards a renewal of the national friendship ought 
to come from us. They might remind us that our Maori 
subjects have a proverb, " Let friends settle their disputes as 
friends." 



222 GREATER BRITAIN. Tchap. xxviii. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

America. 

We are coasting again, gliding through cahn bkie waters, 
watching the dolphins as they play, and the boobies as they fly 
stroke and stroke with the paddles of the ship. Mountains 
rise through the warm misty air, and form a long towering line 
upon the upper skies. Hanging high above us are the Volcano 
of Fire and that of Water — twin menacers of Guatemala City. 
In the sixteenth century, the water-mountain drowned it ; in 
the eighteenth, it was burnt by the fire-hill. Since then, the 
city has been shaken to pieces by earthquakes, and of sixty 
thousand men and women, hardly one escaped. Down the 
valley, between the peaks, we have through the mahogany 
groves an exquisite distant view towards the city. Once more 
passing on, we get peeps, now of West Honduras, and now of 
the island coffee plantations of Costa Rica. The heat is terri- 
ble. It was just here, if we are to believe Drake, that he fell 
in with a shower so hot and scalding, that each drop burnt 
its hole through his men's clothes as they hung up to dry. 
" Steep stories," it is clear, were known before the plantation 
of America. 

Now that the time has come for a leave-taking of the conti- 
nent, we can begin to reflect upon facts gleaned during visits to 
twenty-nine of the forty-five territories and States — twenty-nine 
empires the size of Spain. 

A man may see American countries, from the pine-wastes of 
Maine to the slopes of the Sierra ; may talk with American 
men and women, from the sober citizens of Boston to Digger 
Indians in California; may eat of American dishes, from jerked 
buffalo in Colorado to clambakes on the shores near Salem ; 



CHAP. XXVIII.] AMERICA. 223 

and yet, from the time he first " smells the molasses " at Nan- 
tucket light-ship to the moment when the pilot quits him at the 
Golden Gate, may have no idea of an America. You may 
have seen the East, the South, the West, the Pacific States, and 
yet have failed to find America. It is not till you have left her 
shores that her image grows up in the mind. 

The first thing that strikes the Englishman just landed in 
New York .is the apparent Latinization of the English in 
America ; but before he leaves the country, he comes to see 
that this is at most a local fact, and that the true moral of 
America is the vigour of the English race — the defeat of the 
cheaper by the dearer peoples, the victory of the man whose 
food costs four shillings a day over the man whose food costs 
four pence. Excluding the Atlantic cities, the English in 
America are absorbing the Germans and the Celts, destroying 
the Red Indians, and checking the advance of the Chinese. 

The Anglo-Saxon is the only extirpating race on earth. Up 
to the commencement of the now inevitable destruction of the 
Red Indians of Central North America, of the Maories, and 
of the Australians by the English colonists, no numerous race 
had ever been blotted out by an invader. The Danes and 
Normans amalgamated with the English, the Tartars with the 
Chinese, the Goths and Burgundians wdth the Gauls : the 
Spaniards not only never annihilated a people, but have them- 
selves been all but expelled by the Indians in Mexico and 
South America. The Portuguese in Ceylon, the Dutch in 
Java, the French in Canada and Algeria, have conquered but 
not killed off the native peoples. Hitherto it has been nature's 
rule, that the race that peopled a country in the earliest historic 
days should people it to the end of time. The American 
problem is this : Does the law, in a modified shape, hold good, 
in spite of the destruction of the native population ? Is it true 
that the negroes, now that they are free, are commencing slowly 
to die out ? that the New Englanders are dying fast, and their 
places being supplied by immigrants ? Can the English in 
America, in the long run, survive the common fate of all 
migrating races ? Is it true that, if the American settlers con- 
tinue to exist, it will be at the price of being no longer English, 
but Red Indian ? It is certain that the English families long 



2 24 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xxviii. 

in the land have the features of the extirpated race ; on the 
other hand, in the negroes there is at present no trace of any 
change, save in their becoming dark-brown instead of black. 

The Maories — an immigrant race — -were dying off in New 
Zealand when we landed there. The Indians of Mexico — • 
another immigrant people — had themselves undergone decline, 
numerical and moral, when we first became acquainted with 
them. Are we Enghsh in turn to degenerate abroad, under 
pressure of a great natural law forbidding change ? It is easy 
to say that the English in Old England are not a native but an 
immigrant race ; that they show no symptoms of decline. There, 
however, the change was slight, the distance short, the difference 
of climate small. 

The rapidity of the disappearance of physical type is equalled 
at least, if not exceeded, by that of the total alteration of the 
moral characteristics of the immigrant races — the entire destruc- 
tion of eccentricity, in short. The change that comes over 
those among the Irish who do not remain in the towns is not 
greater than that which overtakes the English handworkers, of 
whom some thousands reach America each year. Gradually 
settling down on land, and finding themselves lost in a sea of 
intelligence, a^nd freed from the inspiring obstacles of antiquated 
institutions and class prejudice, the English handicraftsman, 
ceasing to be roused to aggressive Radicalism by the opposition 
of sinister interests, merges into the contented homestead settler, 
or adventurous backwoodsman. Greater even than this revolu- 
tion of character is that vdiich falls upon the Celt. Not only is 
it a fact known alike to physiologists and statisticians, that the 
children of Irish parents born in America are, physically, not 
Irish, but Americans, but the like is true of the moral type : 
the change in this is at least as sweeping. The son of Fenian 
Pat and bright-eyed Biddy is the normal gaunt American, quick 
of thought, but slow of speech, whom we have begun to re- 
cognise as the latest product of the Saxon race, when housed 
upon the Western .prairies, or in the pine-woods of New 
England. 

For the moral change in the British workman it is not difficult 
to account : the man who will leave country, home, and friends 
to seek new fortunes in America, is essentially not an ordinary 



CHAP. XXVIII.] AMERICA. 225 

man. As a rule, he is above the average in intelhgence, or, if 
defective in this point, he makes up for lack of wit by the 
possession of concentrativeness and energy. Such a man will 
have pushed himself to the front in his club, his union, or his 
shop, before he emigrates. In England, he is somebody; in 
America, he finds all hands contented, or, if not this, at all 
events too busy to complain of such ills as they profess to 
labour under. Among contented men, his equals both in in- 
telligence and ambition, in a country of perfect freedom of 
speech, of manners, of laws, and of society, the occupation of 
his mind is gone, and he comes to think himself what ethers 
seem to think him — a nobody ; a man who no longer is a living 
force. He settles upon land ; and when the world knows him 
no more, his children are happy corn-growers in his stead. 

The shape of North America makes the existence of distinct 
peoples within her limits almost impossible. An upturned bowl, 
with a mountain-rim, from which the streams run inward to- 
wards the centre, she must fuse together all the races that settle 
within her borders, and the fusion must now be in an English 
mould. 

There are homogeneous foreign populations in several portions 
of the United States ; not only the Irish and Chinese, at whose 
prospects we have already glanced, but also Germans in Penn- 
sylvania, Spanish in Florida, French in Louisiana and at Sault 
de Ste. Marie. In Wisconsin there is a Norwegian population of 
over a hundred thousand, retaining their own language and 
their own architecture, and presenting the appearance of a tough 
morsel for the English to digest ; at the same time, the Swedes 
were the first settlers of Delaware and New Jersey, and there 
they have disappeared. 

Milwaukee is a Norwegian town. The houses are narrow 
and high, the windows many, with circular tops ornamented in 
wood or dark-brown stone, and a heavy wooden cornice crowns 
the front. The churches have the wooden bulb and spire which 
are characteristic of the Scandinavian public buildings. The 
Norwegians will not mix with other races, and invariably flock 
to spots where there is already a large population speaking their 
own tongue. Those who enter Canada generally become dis- 
satisfied with the country, and pass on into Wisconsin, or Min- 

Q . 



226 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xxviii. 

nesota, but the Canadian Government has now under its 
consideration a plan for founding a Norwegian colony on Lake 
Huron. The numbers of this people are not so great as to 
make it important to inquire whether they will ever merge into 
the general population. Analogy would lead us to expect that 
they will be absorbed ; their existence is not historical, like 
that of the French in Lower Canada. 

From Burlington, in Iowa, I had visited a spot the history of 
which is typical of the development of America — Nauvoo : — the 
"goodly resting-place." Founded in 1840 by Joe Smith, the 
Mormon city stood upon a bluff overhanging the Des Moines 
rapids of the Mississippi, presenting on the land side the aspect 
of a gentle, graceful slope surmounted by a plain. After the 
fanatical pioneers of English civilization had been driven from 
the city, and their temple burnt, there came Cabet's Icarian 
band, who tried to found a new France in the desert ; but in 
1856 the leader died, and his people dispersed themselves about 
the states of Iowa and Missouri. Next came the English settlers, 
active, thriving, regardless of tradition, and Nauvoo is entering 
on a new life as the capital of a wine-growing country. I found 
Cabet and the Mormons alike forgotten. The ruins of the 
temple have disappeared, and the huge stones have been used 
up in cellars, built to contain the Hock — a pleasant wine, like 
Zeltinger. 

The bearing upon religion of the gradual destruction of race 
is of great moment to the world. Christianity will gain by the 
change; but the question — which of its many branches will 
receive support? is one which only admits of an imperfect answer. 
Arguing a priori, we should expect to find that, on the one 
hand, a tendency towards unity would manifest itself, taking the 
shape, perhaps, of a gain of strength by the Catholic and 
Anglican Churches ; on the other hand, there would be a 
contrary and still stronger tendency towards an infinite multi- 
plication of beliefs, till millions of men and women would become 
each of them his own Church. Coming to the actual cases in 
which we can trace the tendencies that commence to manifest 
themselves, we find that in America the Anglican Church is 
gaining ground, especially on the Pacific side, and that the 
Catholics do not seem to meet with any such success as we 



CHAP. xxviii.'\ AMERICA. 227 

should have looked for ; retaining, indeed, their hold over the 
Irish women and a portion of the men, and having their historic 
French branches in Louisiana and in Canada, but not, unless 
it be in the cities of New York and Philadelphia, making much 
way among the English. 

Between San Francisco and Chicago — for religious purposes 
the most cosmopolitan of cities — we have to draw distinctions. 
In the Pacific city, the disturbing cause is the presence of New- 
Yorkers ; in the metropolis of the N or th-We stern States, it is 
the dominance of New England ideas : still, we shall find no 
two cities so free from local colour, and from the influence of 
race. The result of an examination is not encouraging : in 
both cities there is much external show in the shape of church 
attendance ; in neither does religion strike its roots deeply 
into the hearts of the citizens, except so far as it is alien and 
imported. 

The Spiritualist and Unitarian Churches are both of them 
in Chicago extremely strong : they support newspapers and 
periodicals of their own, and are led by men and women 
of remarkable ability, but they are not the less Cambridge 
Unitarianism, Boston Spiritualism; there is nothing of the 
North-West about them. In San Francisco, on the other hand, 
Anglicanism is prospering, but it is New York Episcopalianism, 
sustained by immigrants and money from the East ; in no sense 
is it a Californian Church. 

Throughout America the multiplication of Churches is rapid, 
but, among the native-born Americans, Supernaturalism is 
advancing with great strides. The Shakers are strong in 
thought, the Spiritualists in wealth and numbers ; Communism 
gains ground, but not Polygamy — the Mormon is a purely 
European Church. 

There is just now progressing in America a great movement, 
headed by the " Radical Unitarians," towards " free religion," 
or Church without Creed. The leaders deny that there is 
sufficient security for the spread of religion in each man's 
individual action ; they desire collective work by all free- 
thinkers and hberal religionists in the direction of truth and 
purity of life. Christianity is higher than dogma, we are told : 
there is no way out of infinite multiplication of creeds but by 

Q 2 



228 GEE A TER BRIT A IK. [chap, xxviii. ■ 

their total extirpation. Oneness of purpose and a common 
love for truth form the members' only tie. Elder Frederick 
Evans said to me : "All truth forms part of Shakerism ;" but 
these free religionists assure us that in all truth consists their 
sole religion. 

The distinctive feature of these American philosophical and 
religious systems is their gigantic width : for instance, every 
human being who admits that disembodied spirits may in any 
wa)'- hold intercourse with dwellers upon earth, whatever else he 
may believe or disbelieve, is claimed by the Spiritualists as a 
member of their Church. They tell us that by " Spiritualism 
they understand whatever bears relation to spirit ; " their 
system embraces all existence, brute, human, and divine ; in 
fact, "the real man is a spirit." According to these ardent 
proselytizers, every poet, every man with a grain of imagination 
in his nature, is a " Spiritualist." They claim Plato, Socrates, 
Milton, Shakespeare, Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, 
Luther, Joseph Addison, Melancthon, Paul, Stephen, the whole 
of the Hebrew prophets. Homer, and John Wesley, among the 
members of their Church. They have lately canonized new 
saints : St. Confucius, St. Theodore (Parker), St. Ralph (Waldo 
Emerson), St. Emma (Hardinge), all figure in their calendar. 
It is a noteworthy fact that the saints are mostly resident in 
New England. 

' The tracts published at the Spiritual Clariofi office. Auburn, 
New York, put forward Spiritualism as a religion which is to 
stand towards existing Churches- as did Christianity towards 
Judaism, and announce a new dispensation to the peoples of 
the earth " who have sown their wild oats in Christianity," but 
they spell supersede with a " c." 

This strange religion has long since left behind the rappings 
and table-turnings in which it took its birth. The secret of its 
success is that it supplies to every man the satisfaction of the 
universal craving for the supernatural, in any form in which he 
will receive it. The Spiritualists claim two millions of active 
believers and five million " favourers " in America. 

The presence of a large German population is thought by 
some to have an important bearing on the religious future of 
America, but the Germans have hitherto kept themselves apart 



CHAP, xxviii.] AMERICA. 229 

from the intellectual progress of the nation. They, as a rule, 
withdraw from towns, and, retaining their language and sup- 
porting local papers of their own, live out of the world of 
American literature and politics, taking however, at rare inter- 
vals, a patriotic part in national affairs, as was notably the case 
at the time of the late rebellion. Living thus by themselves, 
they have even less influence upon American religious thought 
than have the Irish, who, speaking the English tongue, and 
dwelling almost exclusively in towns, are brought more into 
contact with the daily life of the republic. The Germans in 
America are in the main pure materialists under a certain show 
of deism, but hitherto there has been no alliance between them 
and the powerful Chicago Radical Unitarians, difference of 
language having thus far proved a bar to the formation of a 
league which would otherwise have been inevitable. 

On the whole, it would seem that for the moment religious 
prospects are not bright ; the tendency is rather towards in- 
tense and unhealthily-developed feehng in the few, and sub- 
scription to some one of the Episcopalian Churches — Catholic, 
Anglican, or Methodist^among the many, coupled with real 
indifference. Neither the tendency to unity of creeds nor that 
towards infinite multiplication of beliefs has yet made that pro- 
gress which abstract speculation would have led us to expect ; 
but so far as we can judge from the few facts before us, there is 
much likelihood that multiplication will in the future prove too 
strong for unity. 

After all, there is not in America a greater wonder than the 
Englishman himself, for it is to this continent that you must 
come to find him in full possession of his powers. Two 
hundred and fifty millions of people speak or are ruled by 
those who speak the English tongue, and inhabit a third of the 
habitable globe ; but, at the present rate of increase, in sixty 
years there will be two hundred and fifty millions of Englishmen 
dwelling in the United States alone. America has somewhat 
grown since the time when it was gravely proposed to call her 
Alleghania, after a chain of mountains which, looking from this 
western side, may be said to skirt her eastern border, and the 
loftiest peaks of which are but half the height of the very passes 
of the Rocky Mountains. 



230 GREATER BRITAIN. [ohap. xxviii. 

America is becoming, not English merely, but world-embracing 
in the variety of its type \ and, as the English element has given 
language and history to that land, America offers the English 
race the moral directorship of the globe, by ruling mankind 
through Saxon institutions and the English tongue. Through 
America, England is speaking to the world. 






/^- 






^}'- "'■■ 



PART m ESTABLISHED 1375. 



P O L Y N E^fc^foRGETO'^J5^ 



233 



CHAPTER I. 

PiTCAiRN Island. 

Panama is a picturesque time-worn Spanish city, that rises 
abruptly from the sea in a confused pile of decaying bastions 
and decayed cathedrals, while a dense jungle of mangrove and 
bamboo threatens to bury it in rich greenery. The forest is 
filled with baboons and lizards of gigantic size, and is gay with 
the bright plumage of the toucans and macaws, while, within 
the walls, every housetop bears its living load of hideous turkey- 
buzzards, foul-winged and bloodshot-eyed. 

It was the rainy season (which here, indeed, lasts for three- 
quarters of the year), and each day was an alternation of 
shower-bath, and vapour-bath with sickly sun. On the first 
night of my stay, there was a lunar rainbow, which I went on 
to the roof of the hotel to watch. The misty sky was white 
with the reflected light of the hidden moon, which was obscured 
by an inky cloud that seemed a tunnel through the heavens. 
In a few minutes I was driven from my post by the tropical 
rain. 

At the railway station, I parted from my Californian friends, 
who were bound for Aspinwall, and thence by steamer to New 
York. A stranger scene it has not often been my fortune to 
behold. There cannot have been less than a thousand natives, 
wearing enormous hats and little else, and selling everything, 
from linen suits to the last French novel. A tame jaguar, a 
peHcan, parrots, monkeys, pearls, shells, flowers, green cocoa- 
nuts and turtles, mangoes and wild dogs, were among the 
things for sale. The station was guarded by the army of the 
Republic of New Granada, consisting of five officers, a bugler, 
a drummer, and nineteen rank and file. Six of the men wore 



234 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. i. 

red trousers and dirty shirts for uniform ; the rest dressed as 
they pleased, which was generally in Adamic fashion. Not 
even the officers had shoes ; and of the men, one was a full- 
blood Indian, some ten were negroes, and the remainder 
nondescripts, but among them was, of course, an Irishman from 
Cork or Kilkenny. After the train had started, the troops 
formed, and marched briskly through the town, the drummer 
trotting along some twenty yards before the company, French- 
fashion, and beating the retraite. The French invalids from 
Acapulco, who were awaiting in Panama the arrival of an 
Imperial frigate at Aspinwall, stood in the streets to see the 
New Granadans pass, twirling their moustaches, and smiling 
grimly. One old drum-major, lean and worn with fever, turned 
to me, and, shrugging his shoulders, pointed to his side : the 
Granadans had their bayonets tied on with string. 

Whether Panama will continue to hold its present position as 
the " gate of the Pacific " is somewhat doubtful : Nicaragua 
offers greater advantages to the English, Tehuantepec to the 
American traders. The Gulf of Panama and the ocean for a 
great distance to the westward from its mouth are notorious for 
their freedom from all breezes ; the gulf lies, indeed, in the 
equatorial belt of calms, and sailing-vessels can never make 
much use of the port of Panama. Aspinwall or Colon, on the 
Atlantic side, has no true port whatever. As long, however, as 
the question is merely one of railroad and steamship traffic, 
Panama may hold its own against the other isthmus cities ; 
but when the canal is cut, the selected spot must be one that 
shall be beyond the reach of calms — in Nicaragua or Mexico. 

From Panama I sailed in one of the ships of the new Colo- 
nial Line, for Wellington, in New Zealand — the longest steam 
voyage in the world. Our course was to be a " great circle " 
to Pitcairn Island, and another great circle thence to Cape 
Palliser, near Wellington — a distance in all of some 6600 miles ; 
but our actual course was nearer 7000. When off the Galla- 
pagos Islands, we met the cold southerly wind and water, 
known as the Chilian current, and crossed the equator in a 
breeze which forced us all to wear great-coats, and to dream 
that, instead of entering the southern hemisphere, we had come 
by mistake within the arctic circle. 



CHAP. I.] PITCAIRN ISLAND. .235 

■ After traversing lonely and hitherto unknown seas and looking 
in vain for a new guano island, on the sixteenth day we worked 
out the ship's position at noon with more than usual care, if 
that were possible, and found that in four hours we ought to be 
at Pitcairn Island. At half-past two o'clock, land was sighted 
right ahead ; and by four o'clock, we were in the bay, such as 
it is, at Pitcairn. 

Although at sea there was a calm, the surf from the ground- 
swell beat heavily upon the shore, and we were fain content 
ourselves with the view of the island from our decks. It con- 
sists of a single volcanic peak, hung with an arras of green 
creeping plants, passion-flowers, and trumpet-vines. As for the 
people, they came off to us dancing over the seas in their canoes, 
and bringing us green oranges, and bananas, while a huge 
Union Jack was run up on their flagstaff by those who remained 
on shore. 

As the first man came on deck, he rushed to the captain, and 
shaking hands violently, cried, in pure English, entirely free 
from accent, "How do you do, captain? How's Victoria ?" 
There was no disrespect in the omission of the title " Queen ; " 
the question seemed to come from the heart. The bright-eyed 
lads, Adams and Young, descendants of the Bounty mutineers, 
who had been the first to climb our sides, announced the 
coming of Moses Young, the " magistrate " of the isle, who 
presently boarded us in state. He was a grave and gentlemanly 
man, English in appearance, but somewhat slightly built, as 
were, indeed, the lads. The magistrate came off to lay before 
the captain the facts relating to a feud which existed between 
two parties of the islanders, and upon which they required arbi- 
tration. He had been under the impression that we were a 
man-of-war, as we had fired two guns on entering the bay, and 
being received by. our oflicers, who wore the cap of the Naval 
Reserve, he continued in the belief till the captain explained 
what the " Rakaia" was, and why she had called at Pitcairn. 

The case which the captain was to have heard judicially was 
laid before us for our advice while the flues of the ship were 
being cleaned. When the British Government removed the 
Pitcairn Islanders to Norfolk Island, no return to the old home 
was contemplated, but the indolent half-castes found the task 



2 36 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. t. 

of keeping the Norfolk Island convict roads in good repair one 
heavier than they cared to perform, and fifty-two of them have 
lately come back to Pitcairn. A widow who returned with the 
others claims a third of the whole island as having been the 
property of her late husband, and is supported in her demand 
by half the islanders, while Moses Young and the remainder of 
the people admit the facts, but assert that the desertion of the 
island was complete, and operated as an entire abandonment 
of titles, which the re-occupation cannot revive. The success 
of the woman's claim, they say, would be the destruction of the 
prosperity of Pitcairn. 

The case would be an extremely curious one if it had to be 
decided upon legal grounds, for it would raise complicated 
questions both on the nature of British citizenship, and the 
character of the " occupation " title ; but it seemed probable 
that the islanders would abide by the decision of the Governor 
of New South Wales, to which colony they consider themselves 
in some degree attached. 

When we had drawn up a case to be submitted to Sir John 
Young at Sydney, our captain made a commercial treaty with 
the magistrate, who agreed to supply the ships of the new hne, 
whenever daylight allowed them to call at Pitcairn, with oranges, 
bananas, ducks, and fowls, for which he was to receive cloth 
and tobacco in exchange — tobacco being the money of the 
Polynesian Archipelago. Mr. Young told us that his people 
had thirty sheep, which were owned by each of the families in 
turn, the household taking care of them, and receiving the 
profits for one year. Water, he said, sometimes falls short in 
the island, but they then make use of the juice of the green 
cocoa-nut. Their school is excellent ; all the children can 
read and write, and in the election of magistrates they have 
female suffrage. 

When we went on deck again to talk to the younger men, 
Adams asked us a new question : " Have you a Sunday at 
ITome, or a British Workman ? " Our books and papers having 
been ransacked, Moses Young prepared to leave the ship, taking 
with him presents from the stores. Besides the cloth, tobacco, 
hats, and linen, there was a bottle of brandy ; given for medi- 
cine, as the islanders are strict teetotallers. While Young 



CHAP. I.] PITCAIRN ISLAND. 237 

held the bottle in his hand, afraid to trust the lads with it, 
Adams read the label and cried out, "Brandy? Hoav much 
for a dose ? . . . Oh, yes ! all right— I know : it's good for the 
women ?" When they at last left the ship's side, one of the 
canoes was filled with a crinoline and blue silk dress for Mrs. 
Young, and another with a red-and-brown tartan for Mrs. 
Adams, both given by lady passengers, while the lads went 
ashore in dust-coats and smoking-caps. 

Now that the French, with their singular habit of everywhere 
annexing countries which other colonizing nations have rejected, 
are rapidly occupying all the Polynesian groups except the only 
ones that are of value — namely, the Sandwich Islands and 
New Zealand — Pitcairn becomes of some interest as a solitary 
British post on the very border of the French dominions ; and 
it has for us the stronger claim to notice which is raised by 
the fact that it has figured for the last few years on the wrong 
side of ou-r British budget. 

As we stood out from the bay into the lonely seas, the island 
peak showed a black outhne against a pale-green sky, but in 
the west the heavy clouds that in the Pacific never fail to 
cumber the horizon were glowing with a crimson cast by the 
now-set sun, and the dancing wavelets were tinted with reflected 
hues. 

The " scarlet shafts," which poets have ascribed to the tropi- 
cal sunrise, are common at sunj-(^'/ in the South Pacific. Almost 
every night the declining sun, sinking behind the clouds, throws 
rays across the sky — not yellow, as in Europe and America, but 
red or rosy pink. On the night after leaving Pitcairn, I saw a 
still grander effect of light and colour. The sun had set, and 
in the west the clear greenish sky was hidden by pitch-black 
thunderclouds. Through these were crimson caves. 

On the twenty-ninth day of our voyage, we sighted the 
frowning cliff's of Palliser, where the bold bluff, coming sheer 
down three thousand feet, receives the full shock of the South 
Seas — a fitting introduction to the grand scenery of New 
Zealand ; and within a few hours we were running up the great 
sea-lake of Port Nicholson towards long lines of steamers at a 
wharf, behind which were the cottages of Wellington, the 
capital. 



238 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. i. 

To me, coming from San Francisco and the Nevadan towns, 
Wellington appeared very English and extremely quiet; the 
town is sunny and still, but with a holiday look ; indeed I 
could not help fancying that it was Sunday. A certain haziness 
as to what Avas the day of the week prevailed among the pas- 
sengers and crew, for we had arrived upon our Wednesday, 
the. New Zealand Thursday, and so, without losing an hour, 
lost a day ; which, unless by going round the world the other 
way, can never be regained. The bright colours of the painted 
wooden houses, the clear air, the rose-beds, and the emerald- 
green grass, are the true cause of the holiday look of the New 
Zealand towns, and Wellington is the gayest of them all ; for, 
owing to the frequency of earthquakes, the townsfolk are not 
allowed to build in brick or stone. The natives say that once in 
every month " Ruaimoki turns himself," and sad things follow 
to the shaken earth. 

It was now November, the New Zealand spring, and the 
outskirts of Wellington were gay with the cherry-trees in full 
fruiting, and English dog-roses in full bloom, while on every 
road-side bank the gorse blazed in its coat of yellow : there 
was, too, to me, a singular charm in the bright green turf, after 
the tawny grass of California. 

Without making a long halt, I started for the South Island, 
first steaming across Cook's Straits^ and up Queen Charlotte 
Sound to Picton, and then through the French Pass — a narrow 
passage filled with fearful whirlpools — to Nelson, a gem-like 
little Cornish village. After a day's " cattle-branding " with an 
old college friend at his farm in the valley of the Maitai, I sailed 
again for the South, laying for a niglit in Massacre Bay, to avoid 
the worst of a tremendous gale, and then coasting down to The 
Buller and Hokitika — the new gold-fields of the colonies. 



239 



CHAPTER II. 

HOKITIKA. 

« 

Placed in the very track of storms, and open to the sweep of 
rolling seas from every quarter, exposed to waves that run from 
pole to pole, or from South Africa to Cape Horn, the shores of 
New Zealand are famed for swell and surf, and her western rivers 
for the danger of their bars. Insurances at Melbourne are five 
times as high for the voyage to Hokitika as for the longer cruise 
to Brisbane. 

In our little steamer of a hundred tons, built to cross the 
bars, we had reached the mouth of the Hokitika river soon after 
dark, but lay all night some ten miles to the south-west of the 
port. As we steamed in the early morning from our anchorage, 
there rose up on the east the finest sunrise view on which it has 
been my fortune to set eyes. 

A hundred miles of the Southern Alps stood out upon a pale- 
blue sky in curves of a gloomy white that were just beginning 
to blush with pink, but ended to the southward in a cone of fire 
that blazed up from the ocean : it was the snow-dome of Mount 
Cook struck by the rising sun. The evergreen bush, flaming 
with the crimson of the rata-blooms, hung upon the mountain- 
side, and covered the plain with a dense jungle. It was one of 
those sights that haunt men for years, like the eyes of Mary in 
Behini's Milan picture. 

On the bar, three ranks of waves appeared to stand fixed in 
walls of surf These huge rollers are sad destroyers of the New 
Zealand coasting-ships : a steamer was lost here a week before 
my visit, and the harbour-master's whale-boat dashed in pieces, 
and two men drowned. 

Lashing everything that was on deck, and battening down 



240 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ii. 

the hatches in case we should ground in crossing, we prepared 
to run the gauntlet. The steamers often ground for an instant 
while in the trough between the waves, and the second sea, 
pooping them, sweeps them from end to end, but carries them 
into the still water. Watching our time, we were borne on a 
great rolling white-capped wave into the quiet lakelet that forms 
the harbour, just as the sun, coming slowly up behind the range, 
was firing the Alps from north to south; but it was not till we 
had lain some minutes at the wharf that the sun rose to us poor 
mortals of the sea and plain. Hokitika Bay is strangely like 
the lower portion of the Lago Maggiore, but Mount Rosa is 
inferior to Mount Cook. 

As I walked up from the quay to the town, looking for the 
" Empire " Hotel, which I had heard was the best in Hokitika, 
I spied a boy carrying a bundle of some newspapers. It was the 
early edition for the up-country coaches, but I asked if he could 
spare me a copy. He put one into my hand. " How much?" 
1 asked. "A snapper." "Asnappe'r?" "Ay — a tizzy." Under- 
standing this more familiar term, I gave him a shilling. Instead 
of " change," he cocked up his knee, slapt the shilling down on 
it, and said " Cry !" I accordingly cried " Woman!" and won, 
he loyally returning the coin, and walking off minus a paper. 

When I reached that particular gin-palace which was known 
as the hotel, I found that all the rooms were occupied, but that 
I could, if I pleased, lie down on a deal side-table in the billiard- 
room. In our voyage down the qoast from Nelson, we had 
brought for The Buller and for Hokitika a cabin full of cut 
flowers for bouquets, of which the diggers are extremely fond. 
The fact was pretty enough ; the store set upon a single rose — 
" an English rosebud " — culled from a plant that had been 
brought from the old country in a clipper ship, was still more 
touching, but the flowers made sleep below impossible, and it 
had been blowing too hard for me to sleep on deck, so that I 
was glad to lie down upon my table for an hour's rest. The 
boards were rough and full of cracks, and I began to dream 
that, walking on the landing-stage, I ran against a man, who 
drew his revolver on me. In wrenching it from him I hurt my 
hand in the lock, and woke to find my fingers pinched in one 
of the chinks of the long table. Despairing of further sleep, I 



CHAP. 11.] EOEITIKA. 241 

Started to walk through Hokitika, and to explore the " clearings" 
which the settlers are making in the bush. 

At Pakihi and The Buller, I had already seen the places to 
which the latest gold-digging " rush " had taken place, with the 
result of planting there some thousands of men with nothing to 
eat but gold — for diggers, however shrewd, fall an easy prey to 
those who tell them of spots where gold may be had for the 
digging. No attempt is at present made to grow even vegetables 
for the diggers' food : every one is engrossed in the search for 
gold. It is true that the dense jungle is being driven back from 
the diggers' camps by fire and sword, but the clearing is made 
only to give room for tents and houses. At The Buller, I had 
found the forest — which comes down at present to the water's 
edge, and crowds upon the twenty shanties and hundred tents 
and boweries which form the town — smoking with fires on every 
side, and the parrots chattering with fright. The fires obstinately 
refused to spread, but the tall feathery trees were falling fast 
under the axes of some hundred diggers, who seemed not to 
have much romantic sympathy for the sufi'erings of the tree-ferns 
they had uprooted, or of the passion-flowers they were tearing 
from the evergreens they had embraced. 

The soil about The Fox, The Buller, The Okitiki, and the 
other west-coast rivers on which gold is found, is a black leaf- 
mould of extraordinary depth and richness; but in New Zealand, 
as in America, the poor lands are first occupied by the settlers, 
because the fat soils will pay for the clearing only when there is 
already a considerable population on the land. On this west 
coast it rains nearly all the year, and vegetation has such power, 
that "rainy Hokitika" must long continue to be fed from 
Christchurch and from Nelson, for it is as hard to keep the land 
clear as it is at the first to clear it. 

The profits realised upon ventures from Nelson to the Gold 
Coast are enormous ; nothing less than fifty per cent, will com- 
pensate the owners for losses on the bars. The first cattle 
imported from Nelson to The Buller fetched at the latter place 
double the price they had cost only two days earlier. One 
result of this maritime usury that was told me by the steward of 
the steamer in which I came down from Nelson is worth record- 
ing for the benefit of the Economists. They had on board, he 

R 



242 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. ii. 

said, a stock of spirits, sufficient for several trips, but they 
altered their prices according to locality ; from Nelson to The 
Buller, they charged 6d. a drink, but, once in the river, the price 
rose to Ii"., at which it remained until the ship left port upon 
her return to Nelson, when it fell again to 6d. A drover coming 
down in charge of cattle was a great friend of this steward, and 
the latter confirmed the story which he had told me by waking 
the drover when we were off The Buller bar : " Say, mister, if 
you want a drink, you'd better take it. It'll be shilling drinks 
in five minutes." 

The Hokitikians flatter themselves that their city is the 
" most rising place " on earth, and it must be confessed that if 
population alone is to be regarded, the rapidity of its growth 
has been amazing. At the time of my visit, one year and a 
half had passed since the settlement was formed by a few 
diggers, and it already had a permanent population of ten 
thousand, while no less than sixty thousand diggers and their 
friends claimed it for their head-quarters. San Francisco itself 
did not rise so fast, Melbourne not much faster j but Hokitika, 
it must be remembered, is not only a gold-field port, but itself 
upon the gold-field. It is San Francisco and Placerville in one — 
Ballarat and Melbourne. 

Inferior in its banks and theatres to Virginia City, or even 
Austin, there is one point in which Hokitika surpasses every 
American mining town that I have seen — the goodness, namely, 
of its roads. Working upon them in the bright morning sun 
which this day graced "rainy Hokitika" with its presence, 
were a gang of diggers and sailors, dressed in the clothes which 
every one must wear in a digging town unless he wishes to be 
stared at by the passers-by. Even sailors on shore "for a run " 
here wear cord breeches and high tight-fitting boots, often 
armed with spurs ; though, as there are no horses except those 
of the Gold-Coast Police, they cannot enjoy much riding. The 
gang working on the roads were like the people I met about the 
town — rough, but not ill-looking fellows. To my astonishment, 
I saw, conspicuous among their red shirts and " jumpers," the 
blue-and-white uniform of the mounted police ; and from the 
way in which the constables handled their loaded rifles, I came 
to the conclusion that the road-menders must be a gang of 



CHAP. II.] HOKITIKA. 243 

prisoners. On inquiry, I found that all the New Zealand 
" convicts," including under this sweeping title men convicted 
for mere petty offences, and sentenced to hard labour for a 
month, are made to do good practical work upon the roads. 
I was reminded of the Missourian practice of setting prisoners 
to dig out the stumps that cumber the streets of the younger 
towns : the sentence on a man for being drunk is said to be 
that he pull up a black walnut stump ; drunk and disorderly, 
a large buck-eye j assaulting the sheriff, a tough old hickory 
root, and so on. 

The hair and beard of the short-sentence " convicts " in 
New Zealand is never cut, and there is nothing hang-dog in 
their looks j but their faces are often bright, and even happy. 
These cheerful prisoners are for the most part " runners " — 
sailors who have broken their agreements in order to get upon 
the diggings, and who bear their punishment philosophically, 
with the hope of future " finds " before them. 

When the great rush to Melbourne occurred in 1848, ships 
by the hundred were left in the Yarra without a single hand to 
navigate them. Nuggets in the hand would not tempt sailors 
away from the hunt after nuggets in the bush. Ships left 
Hobson's Bay for Chili with half-a-dozen hands ; and in one 
case that came within my knowledge, a captain, his mate, and 
three Maories took a brig across the Pacific to San Francisco. 

As the morning wore on, I came near seeing something of 
more serious crime than that for which these " runners " were 
convicted. " Sticking-up," as highway robbery is called in the 
colonies, has always been common in Australia and New Zea- 
land, but of late the bushrangers, deserting their old tactics, 
have commenced to murder as well as rob. In three months 
of 1866, no less than fifty or sixty murders took place in the 
South Island of New Zealand, all of them committed, it was 
believed, by a gang known as "The Thugs." Mr. George 
Dobson, the Government surveyor, was murdered near Hokitika 
in May, but it was not till November that the gang was broken 
up by the police and volunteers. Levy, Kelly, and Burgess, 
three of the most notorious of the villains, were on their trial 
at Hokitika while 1 was there ; and Sullivan, also a member of 
the band, who had been taken at Nelson, had volunteered 

R 2 



244 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. it. 

to give evidence against them. Sullivan was to come by 
steamer from the North, without touching at The Buller or The 
Grey ; and when the ship was signalled, the excitement of the 
population became considerable, the diggers asserting that 
Sullivan was not only the basest, but the most guilty of all 
the gang. As the vessel ran across the bar and into the bay, 
the police were marched do^vn to the landing-place, and a 
yelling crowd surrounded them, threatening to lynch the 
informer. When the steamer came alongside the wharf, Sulli- 
van was not to be seen, and it was soon discovered that he had 
been landed in a whale-boat upon the outer beach. Off rushed 
the crowd to intercept the party in the town, but they found 
the gaol gates already shut and barred. 

It was hard to say whether it was for Thuggism or for turn- 
ing Queen's evidence that Sullivan was to be lynched : crime 
is looked at here as leniently as it is in Texas. I once met a 
man who had been a coroner at one of the digging towns, who, 
talking of " old times," said, quietly enough : " Oh, yes — plenty 
of work ; we used to make a good deal of it. You see, I was 
paid by fees, so I used generally to manage to hold four or five 
inquests on each body. Awful rogues my assistants were : I 
shouldn't like to have some of those men's sins to answer 
for." 

The Gold-Coast Police Force, which has been formed to put 
a stop to Thuggism and bushranging, is a splendid body of 
cavalry, about which many good stories are told. One digger 
said to me : " Seen our policemen ? We don't have no younger 
sons of British peers among 'em." Another account says that 
none but members of the older English universities are 
admitted to the force. 

There are here, upon the diggings, many military men and 
university graduates, who generally retain their polish of man- 
ner, though, outwardly, they are often the roughest of the rough. 
Some of them tell strange stories. One Cambridge man, who 
was acting as a post-office clerk (not at Hokitika), told me 
that in 1862, shortly after taking his degree, he went out to 
British Columbia to settle upon land. He soon spent his 
capital at billiards in Victoria City, and went as a digger to the 
Frazer River. There he made a " pile," which he gambled 



CHAP. II.] EOKITIEA. 245 

away on his road back, and he struggled through the winter of 
1863-4 by shooting and selling game. In 1864, he was 
attached as a hunter to the Vancouver's Exploring Expedition, 
and in 1865 started with a small sum of money for Australia. 
He was wrecked, lost all he had, and was forced to work his 
passage down to Melbourne. From there he went into South 
Australia as the driver of a reaping-machine, and was finally, 
through the efforts of his friends in England, appointed to a 
post-office clerkship in New Zealand, which colony he intended 
to quit for California or Chili. This was not the only man of 
education whom I myself found upon the diggings, as I met 
with a Christchurch man, who, however, had left Oxford with- 
out a degree, actually working as a digger in a surface mine. 

In the outskirts of Hokitika, I came upon a palpable Life- 
Guardsman, cooking for a roadside station, with his smock 
worn like a soldier's tunic, and his cap stuck on one ear in 
Windsor fashion. A " squatter " from near Christchurch, who 
was at The BuUer selling sheep, told me that he had an 
ex-captain in the Guards at work for weekly wages on his 
" sheep-run," and that a neighbour had a lieutenant of Lancers 
rail-splitting at his " station." 

Neither the habits nor the morals of this strange community 
are of the best. You never see a drunken man, but drinking 
is apparently the chief occupation of that portion of the town 
population which is not actually employed in digging. The 
mail-coaches, which run across the island on the great new 
road, and along the sands to the other mining settlements, 
have singularly short stages ; made so, it would seem, for the 
benefit of the keepers of the " saloons," for at every halt one 
or other of the passengers is expected to " shout," or "stand," 
as it would be called at home, " drinks all round." "What'll 
yer shout ?" is the only question ; and want of coined money 
need be no hindrance, for "gold-dust is taken at the bar." 
One of the favourite amusements of the diggers at Pakihi, on 
the days when the store-schooner arrives from Nelson, is to fill 
a bucket with champagne, and drink till they feel " comfort- 
able." This done, they seat themselves in the road, with their 
feet on the window-sill of the shanty, and, calling to the first 
passer, ask him to drink from the bucket. If he consents — - 



246 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. ii. 

good ; if not, up they jump, and duck his head in the wine, 
which remains for the next comer. 

When I left Hokitika, it was by the new road, 170 miles in 
length, which crosses the Alps and the island, and connects 
Christchurch, the capital of Canterbury, with the western parts 
of the province. The bush between the sea and mountains is 
extremely lovely. The highway is " corduroyed " with trunks 
of the tree-fern, and, in the swamps, the sleepers have begun to 
grow at each end, so that a close-set double row of young tree- 
ferns is rising along portions of the road. The bush is densely 
matted with an undergrowth of supple-jack and all kind of 
creepers, but here and there one finds a grove of tree-ferns 
twenty feet in height, and grown so thickly as to prevent the 
existence of underwood and ground plants. 

The peculiarity which makes the New Zealand west-coast 
scenery the most beautiful in the world to those who like more 
green than California has to show, is that here alone can you 
find semi-tropical vegetation growing close up to the eternal 
snows. The latitude and the great moisture of the climate 
bring the long glaciers very low into the valleys ; and the 
absence of all true winter, coupled with the rainfall, causes the 
growth of palm-like ferns upon the ice-river's very edge. The 
glaciers of Mount Cook are the longest in the world, except 
those at the sources of the Indus, but close about them have 
been found tree-ferns of thirty and forty feet in height. It is 
not till you enter the mountains that you escape the moisture 
of the coast, and quit for the scenery of the Alps the scenery 
of fairy-land. 

Bumping and tumbling in the mail-cart through the rushing 
blue-grey waters of the Taramakao, I found myself within the 
mountains of the Snowy Range. In the Otira Gorge, also 
known as Arthur's Pass — from Arthur Dobson, brother to the 
surveyor murdered by the Thugs — six small glaciers were in 
sight at once. The Rocky Mountains opposite to Denver are 
loftier and not less snowy than the New Zealand Alps, but in 
the Rockies there are no glaciers south of about 50^ N. j while 
in New Zealand — a winterless country — they are common at 
eight degrees nearer to the line. The varying amount of 
moisture has doubtless caused this difference. 



CHAP. IT.] IIOKITIKA. 247 

As we journeyed through the pass, there was one grand view 
— and only one : the ghmpse of the ravine to the eastward of 
Mount Rollestone, caught from the desert shore of Lake Misery 
— a tarn near the " divide " of waters. About its banks there 
grows a plant, unknown, they say, except at this lonely spot — 
the Rockwood lily — a bushy plant, with a round, polished, 
concave leaf, and a cup-shaped flower of virgin white, that 
seems to take its tint from the encircling snows. 

In the evening, we had a view that for gloomy grandeur 
cannot well be matched — that from near Bealey township, where 
we struck the Waimakiriri Valley. The river-bed is half a mile 
in width, the stream itself not more than ten yards across, but, 
like all New Zealand rivers, subject to freshets, which fill its 
bed to a great depth with a surging, foaming flood. Some of 
the victims of the Waimakiriri are buried alongside the road. 
Dark evergreen bush shuts in the river-bed, and is topped on 
the one side by dreary frozen peaks, and on the other by still 
gloomier mountains of bare rock. 

Our road, next morning, from The Cass, where we had spent 
the night, lay through the eastern foot-hills and down to Can- 
terbury Plains by way of Porter's Pass — a narrow track on the 
top of a tremendous precipice, but soon to be changed for a 
road cut along its face. The plains are one great sheep-run, 
open, almost flat, and upon which you lose all sense of size. 
At the mountain-foot they are covered with tall, coarse, native 
grass, and are dry, like the Kansas prairie ; about Christchurch, 
the English clover and English grasses have usurped the soil, 
and all is fresh and green. 

New Zealand is at present divided into nine semi-independent 
provinces, of which three are large and powerful, and the 
remainder comparatively small and poor. Six of the nine are 
true States, having each its history as an independent settle- 
ment ; the remaining three are creations of the Federal Govern- 
ment or of the Crown. 

These are not the only difficulties in the way of New 
Zealand statesmen, for the provinces themselves are far from 
being homogeneous units. Two of the wealthiest of all the 
States, which were settled as colonies with a religious tinge — 
Otago, Presbyterian; and Canterbury, Episcopalian — have been 



248 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ii. 

blessed or cursed with the presence of a vast horde of diggers, 
of no particular religion, and free from any reverence for things 
established. Canterbury Province is not only politically 
divided against itself, but geographically split in twain by the 
Snowy Range, and the diggers hold the west-coast bush, the 
old settlers the east-coast plain. East and west, each cries out 
that the other side is robbing it. The Christchurch people say 
that their money is being spent on Westland, and the Westland 
diggers cry out against the foppery and aristocratic pretence of 
Christchurch. A division of the province seems inevitable, 
unless, indeed, the " CentraHsts " gain the day, and bring aboat 
either a closer union of the whole of the provinces, couplsd 
with a grant of local self-government to their sub-divisions, or 
else the entire destruction of the provincial system. 

The division into provinces was at one time necessary, from 
the fact that the settlements were historically distinct, and 
physically cut off from each other by the impenetrability of the 
bush and the absence of all roads ; but the barriers are now 
surmounted, and no sufficient reason can be found for keeping 
up ten cabinets and ten legislatures for a population of only 
200,000 souls. Such is the costliness of the provincial system 
and of Maori wars, that the taxation of the New Zealanders is 
nine times as heavy as that of their brother colonists in 
Canada. 

It is not probable that so costly and so inefficient a system 
of government as that which now obtains in New Zealand can 
long continue to exist. It is not only dear and bad, but 
dangerous in addition ; and during my visit to Port Chalmers, 
the province of Otago was loudly threatening secession. Like 
all other federal constitutions, that of New Zealand fails to 
provide a sufficiently strong central power to meet a divergence 
of interests between the several States. The system which 
failed in Greece, which failed in Germany, which failed in 
America, has failed here in the antipodes ; and it may be said 
that, in these days of improved communications, wherever 
federation is possible, a still closer union is at least as likely to 
prove lasting. 

New Zealand suffers, not only by the artificial division into 
provinces, but also by the physical division of the country into 



CHAP, n.] EOEITIKA, ^ 249 

two great islands, too far apart to be ever thoroughly homo- 
geneous, too near together to be wholly independent of each 
other. The difficulty has been hitherto increased by the 
existence in the North of a powerful and warlike native race, 
all but extinct in the South Island. Not only have the Southern 
people no native wars, but they have no native claimants from 
whom every acre for the settler must be bought, and they 
naturally decline to submit to ruinous taxation to purchase 
Parewanui from, or to defend Taranaki against, the Maories. 
Having been thwarted by the Home Government in the agita- 
tion for the " separation " of the islands, the Southern people 
now aim at " Ultra-Provincialism," declaring for a system under 
which the provinces would virtually be independent colonies, 
connected only by a confederation of the loosest kind. 

The jealousies of the great towns, here as in Italy, have 
much bearing upon the political situation. Auckland is for 
separation, because in that event it would of necessity become 
the seat of the government of the North Island. In the South, 
Christchurch and Dunedin have similar claims ; and each of 
them, ignoring the other, begs for separation in the hope of 
becoming the Southern capital. Wellington and Nelson alone 
are for the continuance of the federation — Wellington because 
it is already the capital, and Nelson because it is intriguing to 
supplant its neighbour. Although the difficulties of the moment 
mainly arise out of the war expenditure, and will terminate with 
the extinction of the Maori race, her geographical shape almost 
forbids us to hope that New Zealand will ever form a single 
country under a strong central government. 

To obtain an adequate idea of the difficulty of his task, a 
new governor, on landing in New Zealand, could not do better 
than cross the Southern Island. On the west side of the 
mountains, he would find a restless digger-democracy, likely to 
be succeeded in the future by small manufacturers, and spade- 
farmers growing root-crops upon small holdings of fertile loam ; 
on the east, gentlemen sheep-farmers, holding their twenty 
thousand acres each : supporters by their position of the exist- 
• ing state of things, or of an aristocratic republic, in which men 
of their own caste would rule. 

Christchurch — Episcopalian, dignified — the first settlement 



25 o GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. ii. 

in the province, and still the capital, affects to despise Hokitika, 
already more wealthy and more populous. Christchurch im- 
ports English rooks to caw in the elm-trees of her cathedral- 
close ; Hokitika imports men. Christchurch has not fallen 
away from her traditions ; every street is named from an 
English bishopric, and the society is that of an English country 
town. 

Returning northward, along the cost, in the shade of the 
cold and gloomy mountains of the Kaikoura Range, I found at 
Wellington two invitations awaiting me to be present at great 
gatherings of the native tribes. 

The next day, I started for the Manawatu River and Pare- 
wanui Pah. 



251 



CHAPTER III. 

Polynesians. 

The name " Maori " is said to mean " native," but the boast 
on the part of the Maori race contained in the title " Natives 
of the Soil " is one which conflicts with their traditions. These 
make them out to be mere interlopers — Tahitians, they them- 
selves say — who, within historic ages, sailed down island by 
island in their war-canoes, massacring the inhabitants, and, 
finally landing in New Zealand, found a numerous horde of 
blacks of the Australian race living in the forests of the South 
Island. Favoured by a year of exceptional drought, they set 
fire to the woods, and burnt to the last man, or drove into the 
sea, the aboriginal posse\ "^rs of the soil. Some ethnologists 
believe that this account i^ m the main correct, but hold that 
the Maori race is Malay, and not originally Tahitian : others 
have tried to show that the conflict between blacks and browns 
was not confined to these two islands, but raged throughout the 
whole of Polynesia ; and that it was terminated in New Zealand 
itself, not by the destruction of the blacks, but by the amalga- 
mation of the opposing races. 

The legends allege war as the cause for the flight to New 
Zealand. The accounts of some of the migrations are circum- 
stantial in the extreme, and describe the first planting of the 
yams, the astonishment of the people at the new flowers and 
trees of the islands, and many such details of the landing. The 
names of the chiefs and of the canoes are given in a sort of 
" catalogue of ships," and the wars of the settlers are narrated 
at length, with the heroic exaggeration common to the legends 
of all lands. 

The canoe fleet reached New Zealand in the fifteenth century, 



252 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iii. 

it is believed, and the people landed chanting a chorus-speech, 
which is still preserved : 

' ' We come at last to this fair land — a resting-place ; 

Spirit of the Earth, to thee, we, coming from afar, present our hearts 
for food." 

That the Maories are Polynesians there can be no doubt : a 
bird with them is " manu," a fish " ika " (the Greek IxOv'?, become 
with the digamma " piscis " and " poisson ;" and connected with 
"fisch," and "fish"), as they are throughout the Malayan archi- 
pelago and Polynesian isles ; the Maori " atua," a god, is the 
" hotua " of the Friendly Islanders ; the " wahres," or native 
huts, are identical in all the islands ; the names of the chief 
deities are the same throughout Polynesia, and the practice of 
tattooing, the custom of carving grotesque squatting figures on 
tombs, canoes, and " pahs," and that of tabooing things, places, 
times, and persons, prevail from Hawaii to Stewart Land, though 
not everywhere so strictly read as in the Tonga isles, where the 
very ducks are muzzled to keep them from disturbing by their 
quacking the saci'ed stillness of " tapii time." 

Polynesian traditions mostly point to the Malay peninsula as 
the cradle of the race, and the personal resemblance of the 
Maories to the Malays is very strong, except in the setting of 
the eyes ; while the figures on the gate-posts of the New Zealand 
pahs have eyes more oblique than are now found among the 
Maori people. Strangely enough, the New Zealand " pah " is 
identical with the Burmese " stockade," but the word " pah " 
stands both for the palisade and for the village of wahres which 
it contains. The Polynesian and Malay tongues have not 
much in common ; but that variations of language sufficiently 
great to leave no apparent tie spring up in a few centuries^ 
cannot be denied by us who know for certain that " visible " 
and " optician " come from a common root, and can trace the 
steps through which "jour" is derived from " dies." 

The tradition of the Polynesians is that they came from 
Paradise, which they place, in the southern islands, to the 
north ; in the northern islands, to the westward. This legend 
indicates a migration from Asia to the northern islands, and 
thence southwards to New Zealand, and accounts for the 



CHAP. III.] POLYNESIANS. 253 

non-colonization of Australia by the Polynesians. The sea be- 
tween New Zealand and Australia is too rough and wide to 
be traversed by canoes, and the wind-chart shows that the track 
of the Malays must have been eastwards along the equatorial 
belt of calms, and then back to the south-west with the south- 
east trade-wind right abeam to their canoes. 

The wanderings of the Polynesian race were, probably, not 
confined to the Pacific. Ethnology is as yet in its infancy : we 
know nothing of the Tudas of the Neilgherries ; we ask in vain 
who are the Gonds ; we are in doubt about the Japanese ; we 
are lost in perplexity as to who we may be ourselves ; but there 
is at least as much ground for the statement that the Red Indians 
are Malays as for the assertion that we are Saxons. 

The resemblances between the Red Indians and the Pacific 
Islanders are innumerable. Strachey's account of the Indians 
of Virginia, written in 16 12, needs but- a change in the names 
to fit the Maories : Powhatan's house is that of William Thomp- 
son; — cannibalism prevailed in Brazil and along the Pacific 
coast of North America at the time of their discovery, and even 
the Indians of Chili ate many an early navigator ; the abori- 
gines of Vancouver Island are tattooed ; their canoes resemble 
those of the Malays, and the mode of paddling is the same from 
New Zealand to Hudson's Bay — from Florida to Singapore. 
Jade ornaments of the shape of the Maori " Heitiki " (the charm 
worn about the neck) have been found by the French in Guada- 
lupe ; the giant masonry of Central America is similar to that 
of Cambodia and Siam. Small-legged squatting figures, like 
those of the idols of China and Japan, not only surmount the 
gate-posts of the New Zealand pahs, but are found eastwards to 
Honduras, westwards to Burmah, to Tartary and to Ceylon. 
The fibre mats, common to Polynesia and Red India, are un- 
known to savages elsewhere, and the feather head-dresses of the 
Maories are identical with those of the Delawares or Hurons. 

In the Indians of America and of Polynesia there is the 
same hatred of continued toil, and the same readiness to engage 
in violent exertion for a time. Superstition and witchcraft are 
common to all untaught peoples, but in the Malays and red 
men they take similar shapes ; and the Indians of Mexico and 
Peru had, like all the Polynesians, a sacred language, understood 



254 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. in. 

only by the priests. The American altars were one with the 
temples of the Pacific, and were not confined to Mexico, for 
they form the " mounds " of Ohio and Illinois. There is great 
likeness between the legend of Maui, the Maori hero, and that 
of Hiawatha, especially in the history of how the sun was noosed, 
and made to move more slowly through the skies, so as to give 
men long days for toil. The resemblance of the Maori "run- 
anga," or assembly for debate, to the Indian council is extremely 
close, and throughout America and Polynesia a singular blending 
of poetry and ferocity is characteristic of the Malays. 

In colour, the Indians and Polynesians are not alike; but 
colour does not seem to be, ethnologically speaking, of much 
account. The Hindoos of Calcutta have the same features as 
those of Delhi ; but the former are black, the latter brown, or, 
if high-caste men, almost white. Exposure to sun, in a damp, 
hot climate, seems to blacken every race that it does not de- 
stroy. The races that it will finally destroy, tropical heat first 
whitens. The English planters of Mississippi and Florida are 
extremely dark, yet there is not a suspicion of black blood in 
their veins : it is the white blood of the slaves to which the 
Abolitionists refer in their philippics. The Jews at Bombay 
and Aden are of a deep brown ; in Morocco they are swarthy ; 
in England, nearly white. 

Religious rites and social customs outlast both physical type 
and language ; but even were it otherwise, there is great resem- 
blance in build and feature between the Polynesians and many 
of the "Red-Indian" tribes. The aboriginal people of New 
York State are described by the early navigators not as tall, 
grave, hooked-nose men, but as copper-coloured, pleasant- 
looking, and with quick, shrewd eyes ; and the Mexican Indian 
bears more likeness to the Sandwich Islander than to the Dela- 
ware or Cherokee. 

In reaching South America, there were no distances to be 
overcome such as to present insurmountable difficulties to the 
Malays. Their canoes have frequently, within the years that 
we have had our missionary stations in the islands, made invo- 
luntary voyages of six or seven hundred miles. A Western 
editor has said of Columbus that he deserves no praise for dis- 
covering America, as it is so large that he could not well have 



CHAP. III.] POLYNESIANS, 255 

missed it ; but Easter Island is so small, that the chances must 
have been thousands to one against its being reached by canoes 
sailing even from the nearest land ; yet it is an ascertained fact 
that Easter Island was peopled by the Polynesians. Whatever 
drove canoes to Easter Island would have driven them from 
the island to Chili and Peru. The Polynesian Malays would 
sometimes be taken out to sea by sudden storms, by war, by 
hunger, by love of change. In war-time, whole tribes have, 
within historic days, been clapped into their boats, and sent to 
sea by a merciful conqueror who had dined : this occurs, how- 
ever, only when the market is already surfeited with human 
joints. 

In sailing from America to New Zealand, we met strong 
westerly winds before we had gone half-way across the seas, 
and, south of the trade-wind region, these blow constantly to 
within a short distance of the American coast, where they are 
lost upon the edge of the Chilian current. A canoe blown off 
from the southern islands, and running steadily before the wind, 
would be cast on the Peruvian coast near Quito. 

When Columbus landed in the Atlantic islands, he was, 
perhaps, not mistaken in his belief that it was " The Indies " 
that he had found — an India peopled by the Malay race, till 
lately the most widely-scattered of all the nations of the world, 
but one which the English seem destined to supplant. 

The Maories, without doubt, were originally Malays, emi- 
grants from the winterless climate of the Malay peninsula and 
Polynesian archipelago ; and, although the northernmost portions 
of New Zealand suited them not ill, the cold winters of the 
South Island prevented the spread of the bands they planted 
there. At all times it has been remarked by ethnologists and 
acclimatizers that it is easier by far to carry men and beasts 
from the poles towards the tropics than from the tropics to the 
colder regions. The Malays, in coming to New Zealand, un- 
knowingly broke one of Nature's laws, and their descendants 
are paying the penalty in extinction. 



256 GREATER BRITAIN [chap. iv. 



CHAPTER IV. 
Parewanui Pah. 

" Here is Petatone. 
This is the loth of December ; 
The sun shines, and the birds sing ; 
Clear is the water in rivers and streams ; 
Bright is the sky, and the sun is high in the air. 
This is the loth of December ; 
But where is the money ? 

Three years has this matter in many_debates been discussed, 
And here at last is Petatone ; 
But where is the money ?" 

A BAND of Maori women, slowly chanting in a high, strained 
key, stood at the gate of a pah, and met with this song a few 
Englishmen who were driving rapidly on to their land. 

Our track lay through a swamp of the New Zealand flax. 
Huge sword-like leaves and giant flower-stalks all but hid from 
view the Maori stockades. To the left was a village of low 
wahres, fenced round with a double row of lofty posts, carved 
with rude images of gods and men, and having posterns here 
and there. On the right were groves of karakas, children of 
Tanemahuta, the New Zealand sacred trees — under their shade, 
on a hill, a camp and another and larger pah. In startling 
contrast to the dense masses of the oily leaves, there stretched 
a great extent of light-green sward, where there were other 
camps and a tall flag-stafl", from which floated the white flag 
and the Union Jack, emblems of British sovereignty and 
peace. 

A thousand kilted Maories dotted the green landscape with 
patches of brilliant tartans and scarlet cloth. Women lounged 



CHAP. IV.] FAREWANUI PAH. 257 

about, whiling away the time with dance and song ; and from 
all the comers of the glade the soft cadence of the Maori cry 
of welcome came floating to us on the breeze, sweet as the 
sound of distant bells. 

As we drove quickly on, we found ourselves in the midst of a 
thronging crowd of square-built men, brown in colour, and for 
the most part not much darker than Spaniards, but with here 
and there a woolly negro in their ranks. Glancing at them as 
we were hurried past, we saw that the men were robust, well 
limbed, and tall. They greeted us pleasantly with many a 
cheerful, open smile, but the faces of the older people were 
horribly tattooed in spiral curves. The chiefs carried battle- 
clubs of jade and bone ; the women wore strange ornaments. 
At the flag-staff we pulled up, and, while the preliminaries of 
the council were arranged, had time to discuss with Maori and 
with " Pakeha " (white man) the questions that had brought us 
thither. 

The purchase of an enormous block of land — that of the 
Manawatu — had long been an object wished for and worked 
for by the Provincial Government of Wellington. The com- 
pletion of the sale it was that had brought the Superintendent, 
Dr. Featherston, and humbler Pakehas to Parewanui Pah. It 
was not only that the land was wanted by way of room for the 
flood of settlers, but purchase by Government was, moreover, 
the only means whereby war between the various native 
claimants of the land could be prevented. The Pakeha and 
Maori had agreed upon a price ; the question that remained 
for settlement was how the money should be shared. One 
tribe had owned the land from the earliest times ; another had 
conquered some miles of it ; a third had had one of its chiefs 
cooked and eaten upon the ground. In the eye of the Maori 
law, the last of these titles was the best : the blood of a chief 
overrides all mere historic claims. The two strongest human 
motives concurred to make war probable, for avarice and 
jealousy alike prevented agreement as to the division of the 
spoil. Each of the three tribes claiming had half-a-dozen allied 
and related nations upon the ground ; every man was there 
who had a claim direct or indirect, or thought he had, to any 
portion of the block. Individual ownership and tribal owner- 

s 



258 GREATEB BRITAIN. [chap. iv. 

ship conflicted. The Ngatiapa were well armed ; the Nga- 
tiraukawa had their rifles ; the Wanganuis had sent for theirs. 
The greatest tact on the part of Dr. Featherston was needed to 
prevent a fight such as would have roused New Zealand from 
Auckland to Port Nicholson. 

On a signal from the Superintendent, the heralds went round 
the camps and pahs to call the tribes to council. The summons 
was a long-drawn, minor-descending-scale : a plaintive cadence, 
which at a distance blends into a bell-like chord. The words 
mean : " Come hither ! Come hither ! Come ! come ! Mao- 

ries ! Come ! " and men, women, and children soon came 

thronging in from every side, the chiefs bearing sceptres and 
spears of ceremony, and their women wearing round their 
necks the symbol of nobility, the Heitiki, or greenstone god. 
These images, we were told, have pedigrees, and names like 
those of men. 

We, with the resident magistrate of Wanganui, seated our- 
selves beneath the flag-staff. A chief, meeting the people as 
they came up, stayed them with the gesture that Homer 
ascribes to Hector, and bade them sit in a huge circle round 
the spar. 

No sooner were we seated on our mat than there ran slowly 
into the centre of the ring a plumed and kilted chief, with 
sparkling eyes, the perfection of a savage. Halting suddenly, 
he raised himself upon his toes, frowned, and stood brandishing 
his short feathered spear. It was Hunia te Hakeke, the young 
chief of the Ngatiapa. 

Throwing off his plaid, he commenced to speak, springing 
hither and thither with leopard-like freedom of gait, and some- 
times leaping high into the air to emphasize a word. Fierce as 
were the gestures, his speech was conciliatory, and the Maori 
flowed from his lips — a soft Tuscan tongue. As, with a move- 
ment full of vigorous grace, he sprang back to the ranks to 
take his seat, there ran round the ring a hum and buzz of 
popular applause. 

" Governor" Hunia was followed by a young Wanganui 
chief, who wore hunting-breeches and high boots, and a long 
black mantle over his European clothes. There was something 
odd in the shape of the cloak ; and when we came to look 



CHAP. IV.] PAEFAYANUI PAH. 259 

closely at it. we found that it was the skirt of the riding-habit 
of his half-caste wife. The great chiefs paid so little heed to 
this flippant fellow, as to stand up and harangue their tribes 
in the middle of his speech, which came thus to an untimely 
end. 

A funny old grey-beard, Waitere Mam Maru, next rose, and, 
smothering down the jocularity of his face, turned towards us 
for a moment the typical head of Peter, as you see it on the 
windows of every modern church — for a moment only ; for, as 
he raised his hand to wave his tribal sceptre, his apostolic 
drapery began to slip from off his shoulders, and he had to 
clutch at it with the energy of a topman taking-in a reef in a 
whole gale. His speech was full of Nestorian proverbs and 
wise saws, but he wandered off into a history of the Wanganui 
lands, by which he soon became as wearied as we ourselves 
were ; for he stopped short, and, with a twinkle of the eye, 
said : " Ah ! Waitere is no longer young : he is climbing the 
snow-clad mountain Ruahine ; he is becoming an old man /' 
and do^^^l he sat. 

Karanama, a small Ngatiraukawa chief with a Avhite mous- 
tache, who looked like an old French concierge, followed 
Maru Maru, and, with much use of his sceptre, related a dream 
foretelling the happy issue of the negotiations ; for the little 
man was one of those " dreamers of dreams " against whom 
Moses warned the Israelites. 

Karanama's was not the only trance and vision of which we 
heard in the course of these debates. The Maories believe 
that in their dreams the seers hear great bands of spirits sing- 
ing chants : these when they wake the prophets reveal to all 
the people ; but it is remarked that the vision is generally to 
the advantage of the seer's tribe. 

Karanama's speech was answered by the head-chief of the 
Rangitane Maories, Te Peeti Te Awe Awe, who, throwing off 
his upper clothing as he warmed to his subject, and strutting 
pompously round and round the ring, challenged Karanama to 
immediate battle, or his tribe to general encounter ; but he 
cooled down as he went on, and in his last sentence showed us 
that Maori oratory, however ornate usually, can be made ex- 
tremely terse. " It is hot," he said — " it is hot, and the very 

s 2 



26o GREATER BRITAIN. fcHAP. iv, 

birds are loath to sing. We have talked for a week, and are 
therefore dry. Let us take our share — ^10,000, or whatever 
we can get — and then we shall be dry no more." 

The Maori custom of walking about, dancing, leaping, un- 
dressing, running, and brandishing spears during the delivery 
of a speech is convenient for all parties : to the speaker, be- 
cause it gives him time to think of what he shall say next ; to 
the listener, because it allows him to weigh the speaker's words; 
to the European hearer, because it permits the interpreter to 
keep pace with the orator without an effort. On this occasion, 
the resident magistrate of Wanganui — Mr. Buller, a Maori 
scholar of eminence, and the attached friend of some of the 
chiefs — interpreted for Dr. Featherston ; and we were allowed 
to lean over him in such a way as to hear every word that 
passed. That the able Superintendent of Wellington — the 
great protector of the Maories, the man to whom they look as 
to Queen Victoria's second in command, should be wholly 
dependent upon interpreters, however skilled, seems almost 
too singular to be believed ; but it is possible that Dr. Feather- 
ston may find in pretended want of knowledge much advantage 
to the Government. He is able to collect his thoughts before 
he replies to a difficult question ; he can allow an epithet to 
escape his notice in the filter of translation ; he can listen and 
speak with greater dignity. 

The day was wearing on before Te Peeti's speech was done, 
and, as the Maories say, our waistbands began to slip down 
low ; so all now went to lunch, both Maori and Pakeha, they 
sitting in circles, each with his bowl, or flax-blade dish, and 
wooden spoon, we having a table and a chair or two in the 
Mission-house ; but we were so tempted by Hori Kingi's * 
whitebait that we begged some of him as we passed. The 
Maories boil the little fish in milk, and flavour them with leeks. 
Great fish, meat, vegetables, almost all they eat, in short, save 
whitebait, is " steamed " in the underground native oven. A 
hole is dug, and filled with wood, and stones are piled upon 
the wood, a small opening being left for draught. While the 
wood is burning, the stones become red-hot, and fall through 
into the hole. They are then covered with damp fern, or else 

* Hori Kingi te Anansia died on the i8th of September, 1868. 



CHAP. IV. J PAREWANUI PAH. 261 

with wet mats of flax, plaited at the moment ; the meat is put 
in, and covered with more mats ; the whole is sprinkled with 
water, and then earth is heaped on till the vapour ceases to 
escape. The joint takes about an hour, and is delicious. Fish 
is wrapped in a kind of dock-leaf, and so steamed. 

While the men's eating 'was thus going on, many of the 
women stood idly round, and we were enabled to judge of 
Maori beauty. A profusion of long, crisp curls, a short black 
pipe thrust between stained lips, a pair of black eyes gleaming 
from a tattooed face, denote the Maori belle, who wears for her 
only robe a long bedgown of dirty calico, but whose ears and 
neck are tricked out with greenstone ornaments, the signs of 
birth and wealth. Here and there you find a girl with long, 
smooth tresses, and almond-shaped black eyes : these charms 
often go along with prominent, thin features, and suggest at 
once the Jewess and the gipsy girl. The women smoke con- 
tinually ; the men not much. 

When at four o'clock we returned to the flag-staff, we found 
that the temperature, which during the morning had been too 
hot, had become that of a fine English June — the air light, the 
trees and grass lit by a gleaming yellow sunshine that reminded 
me of the Californian haze. 

During luncheon we had heard that Dr. Featherston's pro- 
posals as to the division of the purchase-money had been 
accepted by the Ngatiapa, but not by Hunia himself, whose 
vanity would brook no scheme not of his own conception. We 
were no sooner returned to the ring than he burst in upon us 
with a defiant speech. " Unjust," he declared, " as was the 
proposition of great ' Petatone ' (Featherston), he would have 
accepted it for the sake of peace had he been allowed to divide 
the tribal share ; but as the Wanganuis insisted on having a 
third of his ;i^i5,ooo, and as Petatone seemed to support them 
in their claim, he should have nothing more to do with the 
sale." "The Wanganuis claim as our relatives," he said: 
"verily, the pumpkin-shoots spread far." 

Karanama, the seer, stood up to answer Hunia, and began 
his speech in a tone of ridicule. " Hunia is like the ti-tree : 
if you cut him down he sprouts again." Hunia sat quietly 
through a good deal of this kind of wit, till at last some epithet 



252 " GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. iv. 

provoked him to interrupt the speaker. " What a fine fellow 
you are, Karanama ; you'll tell us soon that you've two pair of 
legs." " Sit down !" shrieked Karanama, and a word-war en- 
sued, but the abuse was too full of native raciness and vigour 
to be fit for English ears. The chiefs kept dancing round the 
ring, threatening each other with their spears. " Why do not 
you hurl at me, Karanama?" said Hunia; "it is easier to parry 
spears than lies." At last Hunia sat down. 

Karanama, feinting and making at him with his spear, re- 
proached Hunia with a serious flaw in his pedigree — a blot 
which is said to account for Hunia's hatred to the Ngatiraukawa, 
to Avhom his mother was for years a slave. Hunia, without 
rising from the ground, shrieked " Liar !" Karanama again 
spoke the obnoxious word. Springing from the ground, Hunia 
snatched his spear from where it stood, and ran at his enemy 
as though to strike him. Karanama stood stock-still. Coming 
up to him at a charge, Hunia suddenly stopped, raised himself 
on tiptoe, shaking his spear, and flung out som^e contemptuous 
epithet ; then turned, and stalked slowly, with a springing gait, 
back to his own corner of the ring. There he stood, harangu- 
ing his people in a bitter undertone. Karanama did the like 
with his. The interpreters could not keep pace with what was 
said. We understood that the chiefs were calling each upon 
his tribe to support him, if need were, in war. After a few 
minutes of this pause, they wheeled round, as though by a 
common impulse, and again began to pour out torrents of 
abuse. The applause became frequent, hums quickened into 
shouts, cheer followed cheer, till at last the ring was alive with 
men and women springing from the ground, and crying out on 
the opposing leader for a dastard. 

We had previously been told to have no fear that resort 
would be had to blows. The Maories never fight upon a 
sudden quarrel : war is with them a solemn act, entered upon 
only after much deliberation. Those of us who were strangers 
to New Zealand were nevertheless not without our doubts, 
while for half an hour we lay upon the grass watching the armed 
champions running round the ring, challenging each other to 
mortal combat on the spot. 

The chieftains at last became exhausted, and the Mission- 



CHAP. IV.] PAREWANUI PAH. 263 

bell beginning to toll for evening chapel, Hunia broke off 
in the middle of his abuse : " Ah ! I hear the bell ! " and 
turning, stalked out of the ring towards his pah, leaving it to be 
inferred, by those who did not know him, that he was going 
to attend the service. The meeting broke up in confusion, 
and the Upper Wanganui tribes at once began their march 
towards the mountains, leaving behind them only a delegation 
of their chiefs. 

As we drove down to the coast, we talked over the close 
resemblance of the Maori runanga to the Homeric council ; it 
had struck us all. Here, as in the Greek camp, we had the 
ring of people, into which advanced the lance-bearing or 
sceptre-wearing chiefs, they alone speaking, and the people 
backing them only by a hum : " The block of wood dictates not 
to the carver, neither the people to their chiefs," is a Maori 
proverb. The boasting of ancestry, and bragging of deeds and 
military exploits, to which modern wind-bags would only 
casually allude, was also thoroughly Homeric. In Hunia we 
had our Achilles ; the retreat of Hunia to his wahre was that 
of Achilles to his tent ; the cause of quarrel alone was different, 
though in both cases it arose out of the division of spoil, in the 
one case the result of lucky wars, in the other of the Pakeha's 
weakness. The Argive and Maori leaders are one in fire, 
figure, port, and mien ; alike, too, even in their sulkiness. In 
Waitere and Aperahama Tipai we had two Nestors ; our Ther- 
sites was Porea, the jester, a half-mad buffoon, continually 
mimicking the chiefs or interrupting them, and being by them 
or their messengers as often kicked and cuffed. In the fre- 
quency of repetition, the use of proverbs and of simile, the 
Maories resemble not Homer's Greeks so much as Homer's 
self; but the calling together of the people by the heralds, the 
secret conclave of the chiefs, the feast, the conduct of the 
assembly — all were the exact repetition of the events recorded 
in the first and second books of the " Iliad '' as having happened 
on the Trojan Plains. The single point of difference was not 
in favour of the Greeks : the Maori women took their place in 
council with the men. 

As we drove home, a storm came on, and hung about the 
coast so long, that it was not till near eleven at night that we 



2 64 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iv. 

were able to take our swim in the heated waters of the Ma- 
nawatu river, and frighten off every duck and heron in the 
district. 

In the morning, we rose to alarming news. Upon the 
pretext of the presence in the neighbourhood, of the Hau-Hau 
chief Wi Hapi, with a war party of 200 men, the unarmed 
Parewanui natives had sent to Wanganui for their guns, and it 
was only by a conciliatory speech at the midnight runanga that 
Mr. Buller had succeeded in preventing a complete break-up 
of all the camps, if not an intertribal war. There seemed to be 
white men behind the scenes who were not friendly to the sale, 
and the debate had lasted from dark till dawn. 

While we were at breakfast, a Ngatiapa officer of the native 
contingent brought down a letter to Dr. Featherston from 
Hunia and Hori Kingi, calling us to a general meeting of the 
tribes convened for noon, to be held in the Ngatiapa Pah. The 
letter was addressed, " Kia te Petatone te Huperintene "— " To 
the Featherston, the Superintendent " — the alterations in the 
chief words being made to bring them within the grasp of 
Maori tongues, which cannot sound /'s, th's, nor sibilants of 
any kind. The absence of harsh sounds, and the rule which 
makes every word end with a vowel, give a peculiar softness 
and charm to the Maori language. Sugar becomes huka ; 
scissors, hikiri ; sheep, hipi ; and so with all English words 
adopted into Maori. The rendering of the Hebrew names of 
the Old Testament is often singular : Genesis becomes 
Kenehi ; Exodus is altered into Ekoruhe ; Leviticus is hardly 
recognisable in Rewitikuha ; Tiuteronomi reads strangely for 
Deuteronomy, and Hohua for Joshua ; Jacob, Isaac, Moses, 
become Hakopa, Ihaka, and Mohi; Egypt is softened into 
Ihipa, Jordan into Horamo. The list of the nations of 
Canaan seems to have been a stumbling-block in the mis- 
sionaries' way. The success obtained with Girgashites has not 
been great ; it stands Kirekah ; Gaash is transmuted into 
Kaaha, and Eleazar into Ereatara. 

When we drove on to the ground, all was at a dead-lock — 
the flag-staff bare, the chiefs sleeping in their wahres, and the 
common folk whiling away the hours with haka songs. Dr. 
Featherston retired from the ground, declaring that till the 



CHAP. IV.] PAREWANUI PAH. 265 

Queen's flag was hoisted he would attend no debate ; but he 
permitted us to wander in among the Maories. 

We were introduced to Tamiana te Rauparaha, chief of the 
Ngatitoa branch of the Ngatiraukawa, and son of the great 
cannibal chief of the same name who murdered Captain Wake- 
field. Old Rauparaha it was who hired an English ship to 
carry him and his nation to the South Island, where they ate 
several tribes, boiling the chiefs, by the captain's consent, in the 
ship's coppers, and salting down for future use the common 
people. When the captain, on return to port, claimed his price, 
Rauparaha told him to go about his business, or he should be 
salted too. The captain took the hint, but he did not escape 
for long, as he was finally eaten by the Sandwich Islanders in 
Hawaii. 

In answer to our request for a dance-song, Tamiana and 
Horomona Toremi replied through an interpreter that " the 
hands of the singers should beat time as fast as the pinions of 
the wild duck ;" and in a minute we were in the middle of an 
animated crowd of boys and women collected by Porea, the 
buffoon. 

As soon as the singers had squatted upon the grass, the 
jester began to run slowly up and down between their ranks 
as they sat swinging backwards and forwards in regular time, 
groaning in chorus, and looking upwards with distorted faces. 

In a second dance, a girl standing out upon the grass chanted 
the air — a kind of capstan song — and then the " dancers," who 
were seated in one long row, joined in chorus, breathing 
violently in perfect time, half forming words, but not notes, 
swinging from side to side like the howling dervishes, and using 
frightful gestures. This strange whisper-roaring went on in- 
creasing in rapidity and fierceness, till at last the singers 
worked themselves into a frenzy, in which they rolled their 
eyes, stiffened the arms and legs, clutched and clawed with the 
fingers, and snorted like maddened horses. Stripping off their 
clothes, they looked more like the Maories of thirty years ago 
than those who see them only at the mission-stations would 
believe. Other song-dances, in which the singers stood 
striking their heels at measured intervals upon the earth, were 
taken up with equal vigour by the boys and women, the grown 



266 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iv. 

men in their dignity keeping themselves aloof, although in his 
heart every Maori loves mimetic dance and song. We remarked 
that in the " haka " the old women seemed more in earnest than 
the young, who were always bursting into laughter, and forget- 
ting words and time. 

The savage love for semitones makes Maori music somewhat 
wearisome to the English ear ; so after a time we began to walk 
through the pahs and sketch the Maories, to their great delight. 
I was drawing the grand old head of a venerable dame — 
Oriuhia te Aka — when she asked to see what I was about. As , 
soon as I showed her the sketch, she began to call me names, 
and from her gestures I saw that the insult was in the omission 
of the tattooing on her chin. When I inserted the stripes and 
curves, her delight was such that I greatly feared she would 
have embraced me. 

Strolling into the karaka groves, we came upon a Maori 
wooden tomb, of which the front was carved with figures three 
feet high, grotesque and obscene. Gigantic eyes, hands bearing 
clubs, limbs without bodies, and bodies without limbs, were 
figured here and there among more perfect carvings, and the 
whole was of a character which the Maories of to-day disown, 
as they do cannibalism, wishing to have these horrid things for- 
gotten. The sudden rise of the Hau-Hau fanaticism within 
the last few years has shown us that the layer of civifization by 
which the old Maori habits are overlaid is thin indeed. 

The flags remained down all day, and in the afternoon we 
returned to the coast to shoot duck and pukeko, a sort of 
moor-hen. It was not easy work, for the birds fell in the flax- 
swamp, and the giant sword-like leaves of the Phormium 
tenax cut our hands as we pushed our way through its dense 
clumps and bushes, while some of the party suffered badly 
from the sun : Maui, the Maories say, must have chained him 
up too near the earth. After dark, we could see the glare of 
the fires in the karaka groves, where the Maories were in 
council, and a Government surveyor came in to report that 
he had met the dissentient Wanganuis riding fast towards the 
hills. 

In the morning, we were allowed to stay upon the coast till 
ten or eleven o'clock, when a messenger came down from Mr. 



CHAP. IV.] PAREWANUI PAH. -267 

Buller to call us to the pah : the council of the chiefs had again 
sat all night — for the Maories act upon their proverb that the 
eyes of great chiefs should know no rest — and Hunia had 
carried everything before him in the debate. 

As soon as the ring was formed, Hunia apologized for the 
pulling down of the Queen's flag ; it had been done, he said, 
as a sign that the sale was broken off, not as an act of dis- 
respect. Having, in short, had things entirely his own way, 
he was disposed to be extremely friendly both to whites and 
Maories. The sale, he said, must be brought about, or the 
" world would be on fire "vvith an intertribal war. What is the 
good of the mountain-land ? There is nothing to eat but 
stones ; granite is a hard but not a strengthening food ; and 
women and land are the ruin of men." 

After congratulatory speeches from other chiefs, some of the 
older men treated us to histories of the deeds that had been 
wrought upon the block of land. Some of their speeches — 
notably those of Aperahama and Ihakara — were largely built 
up of legendary poems ; but the orators quoted the poetry as 
such only when in doubt how far the sentiments were those of 
the assembled people : when they were backed by the hum 
which denotes applause, they at once commenced with singular 
art to weave the poetry into that which was their own. 

As soon as the speeches were over, Hunia and Ihakara 
marched up to the flag-staff carrying between them the deed- 
of-sale. Putting it down before Dr. Featherston, they shook 
hands with each other and with him, and swore that for the 
future there should be eternal friendship between their tribes. 
The deed was then signed by many hundred men and women, 
and Dr. Featherston started with Captain te Kepa,* of the 
native contingent, to fetch the ^25,000 from Wanganui town, 
the Maories firing their rifles into the air as a salute. 

The Superintendent was no sooner gone than a kind of 
solemn grief seemed to come over the assembled people. 
After all, they were selling the graves of their ancestors, they 
argued. The wife of Hamuera, seizing her husband's green- 
stone club, ran out from the ranks of the women, and began to 

* Wounded at the defence of Okutuku, against the escaped Hau-Haus, 
7th of November, i< 



268 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iv. 

intone an impromptu song, which was echoed by the women, 
in a pathetic chorus-chant : — 

" The sun shines, but we quit our land ; we abandon for ever its forests,' 
its mountains, its groves, its lakes, its shores. 

All its fair fisheries, here, under the bright sun, for ever we renounce. 

It is a lovely day ; fair will be the children that are born to-day ; but 
we quit our land. 

In some parts there is forest ; in others, the ground is skimmed over 
by the birds in their flight. 

Upon the trees there is fruit ; in the streams, fish ; in the fields, pota- 
toes ; fern-roots in the bush ; but we quit our land." 

It is in chorus-speeches of this kind that David's psalms must 
have been recited by the Jews ; but on this occasion there was 
a good deal of mere acting in the grief, for the tribes had never 
occupied the land that they now sold. 

The next day. Dr. Featherston drove into camp surrounded 
by a brilliant cavalcade of Maori cavalry, amid much yelling 
and firing of pieces skywards. Hunia, in receiving him, de- 
clared that he would not have the money paid till the morrow, 
as the sun must shine upon the transfer of the lands. It 
would take his people all the night, he said, to work themselves 
up to the right pitch for a war-dance; so he sent down a 
strong guard to watch the money-chests, which had been con- 
veyed to the missionary hut. The Ngatiapa sentry posted 
inside the room was an odd cross between savagery and civi- 
lization ; he wore the cap of the native contingent, and nothing 
else but a red kilt. He was armed with a short Wilkinson 
rifle, for which he had, however, not a round of ammunition, 
his cartridges being Enfield and his piece unloaded. Bar- 
barian or not, he seemed to like raw gin, with which some 
Englishman had unlawfully and unfairly tempted him. 

In the morning, the money was handed over in the runanga- 
house, and a signet-ring presented to Hunia by Dr. Featherston 
in pledge of peace, and memory of the sale ; but owing to the 
heat, we soon adjourned to the karaka grove, where Hunia 
made a congratulatory and somewhat boastful speech, offering 
his friendship and alliance to Dr. Featherston. 

The assembly was soon dismissed, and the chiefs withdrew 
to prepare for the grandest war-dance that had been seen for 



CHAP. iv.J PAREWANUI PAH. 269 

years, while a party went off to catch and kill the oxen that 
were to be " steamed " whole, just as our friends' fathers would 
have steamed us. 

A chief was detached by Hunia to guide us to a hill whence 
we commanded the whole glade. No sooner had we taken 
our seats than the Ngatiraukawa to the number of a hundred 
fighting-men, armed with spears, and led by a dozen women 
bearing clubs, marched out from their camp, and formed in 
column, their chiefs making speeches of exhortation from the 
ranks. After a pause, we heard the measured groaning of a 
distant haka, and, looking up the glade, at the distance of a 
mile saw some two score Wanganui warriors jumping in per- 
fect time, now to one side, now to the other, grasping their 
rifles by the barrel, and raising them as one man each time 
they jumped. Presently, bending one knee, but stiffening the 
other leg, they advanced, stepping together with a hopping 
movement, slapping their hips and thighs, and shouting from 
the palate, " Hough ! Hough !" with fearful emphasis. 

A shout from the Ngatiraukawa hailed the approach of the 
Ngatiapa, who deployed from the woods some two hundred 
strong, all armed with Enfield rifles. They united with the 
Wanganuis, and marched slowly down with their rifles at the 
"charge," steadily singing war-songs. When within a hundred 
yards of the opposing ranks, they halted, and sent in their 
challenge. The Ngatiraukawa and Ngatiapa heralds passed 
each other in silence, and each delivered his message to the 
hostile chief. 

We could see that the allies were led by Hunia in all the 
bravery of his war-costume. In his hair he wore a heron 
plume, and another was fastened near the muzzle of his short 
carbine ; his limbs were bare, but about his shoulders he had 
a pure white scarf of satin. His kilt was gauze-silk, of three 
colours — pink, emerald, and cherry — arranged in such a way 
as to show as much of the green as of the two other colours. 
The contrast, which upon a white skin would have been glaring 
in its ugliness, was perfect when backed by the nut-brown of 
Hunia's chest and legs. As he ran before his tribe, he was 
the ideal savage. 

The instant that the heralds had returned, a charge took 



270 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iv. 

place, the forces passing through each other's ranks as they do 
upon the stage, but with frightful yells. After this, they formed 
two deep, in three companies, and danced the " musket-exercise 
war-dance" in wonderful time, the women leading, thrusting 
out their tongues, and shaking their long pendant breasts. 
Among them was Hamuera's wife, standing drawn up to her 
full height, her limbs stiffened, her head thrown back, her 
mouth wide open and tongue protruding, her eyes rolled so as 
to show the white, and her arms stretched out in front of her, 
as she slowly chanted. The illusion was perfect : she became 
for the time a mad prophetess ; yet all the frenzy was assumed 
at a whim, to be cast aside in half an hour. The shouts were 
of the same under-breath kind as in the haka, but they were 
aided by the sounds of horns and conch-shells, and from the 
number of men engaged the noise was this time terrible. After 
much fierce singing, the musket-dance was repeated, with furious 
leaps and gestures, till the men became utterly exhausted, when 
the review was closed by a general discharge of rifles. Running 
with nimble feet, the dancers were soon back within their pahs, 
and the feast, beginning now, was, like a Russian banquet, 
prolonged till morning. 

It is not hard to understand the conduct of Lord Durham's 
settlers, who landed here in 1837, The friendly natives re- 
ceived the party with a war-dance, which had upon them such 
an effect that they immediately took ship for Australia, where 
they remained. 

The next day, when we called on Governor Hunia at his 
wahre to bid him farewell, before our departure for the capital, 
he made two speeches to us which are worth recording as 
specimens of Maori oratory. Speaking through Mr. Buller, 
who had been kind enough to escort us to the Ngatiapa's 
wahre, Hunia said : — 

" Hail, guests ! You have just now seen the settlement of 
a great dispute — the greatest of modern time. 

" This was a weighty trouble — a grave difficulty. 

" Many Pakehas have tried to settle it — in vain. For 
Petatone was it reserved to end it. I have said that great is 
our gratitude to Petatone. 

" If Petatone hath need of me in the future, I shall be there. 



CHAP. IV.] PAREWANUI PAH. 271 

If he climbs the lofty tree, I will climb it with him. If he 
scales high cliffs, I will scale them too. If Petatone needeth 
help, he shall have it ; and where he leads, there will I 
follow. 

" Such are the words of Hunia." 

To this speech one of us replied, explaining our position as 
guests from Britain. 

Hunia then began again to speak : — 

*' O my guests, a few days since when asked for a war-dance, 
I refused. I refused because my people were sad at heart. 

" We were loath to refuse our guests, but the tribes were 
grieved ; the people were sorrowful at heart. 

" To-day we are happy, and the war-dance has taken place. 

" O my guests, when ye return to our great Queen, tell her 
that we will fight for her again as we have fought before. 

" She is our Queen as well as your Queen — Queen of Maories 
and Queen of Pakeha. 

" Should wars arise, we will take up our rifles, and march 
whithersoever she shall direct. 

" You have heard of the King movement. I was a Kingite ; 
but that did not prevent me fighting for the Queen — I and my 
chiefs. 

" My cousin, Wire'mu, went to England, and saw our Queen. 
He returned. . . . 

" Wlien you landed in this island, he was already dead. . . . 

" He died fighting for our Queen. 

" As he died, we will die, if need be — I and all my chiefs. 
This do you tell our Queen. 

" I have said." 

This passage, spoken as Hunia spoke it, was one of noble 
eloquence and singular rhetoric art. The first few words about 
Wiremu were spoken in a half-indifferent way ; but there was a 
long pause before and after the statement that he was dead, and 
a sinking of the voice when he related how Wiremu had died, 
followed by a burst of sudden fire in the "As he died, we will 
die — I and all my chiefs." 

After a minute or two, Hunia resumed : — • 

" This is another word. 

" We are all of us glad to see you. 



2 72 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iv. 

" When we wrote to Pe'tatone, we asked him that he would 
bring with him Pakehas from England and from Australia — 
Pakehas from all parts of the Queen's broad lands. 

" Pakehas who should return to tell the Queen that the 
Ngatiapa are her liegemen. 

"We are much rejoiced that you are here. May your heart 
rest here among us ; but if you go once more to your English 
home, tell the people that we are Petatone's faithful subjects 
and the Queen's. 

" I have said." 

After pledging Hania in a cup of wine, we returned to our 
temporary home. 




273 



CHAPTER V. 

The Maories. 

Parting with my companions (who were going northwards) in 
order that I might return to Welhngton, and thence take ship 
to Taranaki, I started at daybreak on a lovely morning to walk 
by the sea-shore to Otaki. As I left the bank of the Manawatu 
river for the sands, Mount Egmont near Taranaki, and Mounts 
Ruapehu and Tongariro, in the centre of the island, hung their 
great snow-domes in the soft blue of the sky behind me, and 
seemed to have parted from their bases. 

I soon passed through the flax-swamp where we for days had 
shot the pukeko, and coming out upon the wet sands, which 
here are glittering and full of the Taranaki steel, I took off 
boots and socks, and trudged the whole distance barefoot, 
regardless of the morrow. It was hard to walk without crunch- 
ing with the heel shells which would be thought rare at home, 
and here and there charming little tern and other tiny sea-fowl 
flew at me, and all but pecked my eyes out for coming near 
their nests. 

During the day I forded two large rivers and small streams 
innumerable, and swam the Ohau, where Dr. Featherston last 
week lost his dog-cart in the quicksands, but I managed to 
reach Otaki before sunset, in time to revel in a typical New 
Zealand view. The foreground was composed of ancient sand- 
hills, covered with the native flax, with the deliciously-scented 
Manuka ti-tree, brilliant in white flower, and with giant fern, 
tuft-grass, and tussac. Farther inland was the bush, evergreen, 
bunch-like in its foliage, and so overladen with parasitic 
vegetation, that the true leaves were hidden by usurpers, or 
crushed to death in the folds of snake-like creepers. The 

T 



2 74 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. v. 

view was bounded by bush-clad mountains, rosy with the sunset 
tints. 

Otaki is Archdeacon Hadfield's church-settlement of Christian 
Maories ; but of late there have been signs of wavering in 
the tribes, and I found Major Edwardes, who had been with 
us at Parewanui, engaged in holding, for the Government, a 
runanga of Hau-Haus, or anti-Christian Maories, in the Otaki 
Pah. Some of these fellows had lately held a meeting, and had 
themselves re-baptized, but this time out of instead of i?tto the 
Church. They received fresh names, and are said to have 
politely invited the Archdeacon to perform the ceremony. 

Maori Church-of-Englandism has proved a failure. A dozen 
native clergymen are, it is true, supported in comfort by their 
countrymen, but the tribes would support a hundred such, if 
necessary, rather than give up the fertile " reservations," such 
as that of Otaki, which their pretended Christianity has secured. 
There is much in the Maori that is tiger-like, and it is in the blood, 
not to be drawn out of it by a few years of playing at Christianity. 

The labours of the missionaries have been great, their earnest- 
ness and devotion unsurpassed. Up to the day of the outbreak 
of Hau-Hauism, their influence with the natives was thought to 
be enormous. The entire Maori race had been baptized, thou- 
sands of natives had attended the schools, hundreds had become 
communicants and catechists. In a day, the number of native 
Christians was reduced from thirty thousand to some hundreds. 
Right and left the tribes flocked to the bush, deserting mission- 
stations, villages, herds, and fields. Those few who dared not 
go were there in spirit ; all sympathised, if not with the Hau- 
Hau movement, at least with Kingism. The Archdeacon and 
his brethren of the holy calling were at their wits' ends. Not 
only did Christianity disappear : civilization itself accompanied 
religion in her flight, and habits of bloodshed and barbarity, 
unknown since the nominal renunciation of idolatry, in a day 
returned. The fall was terrible, but it went to show that the 
apparent success had been fictitious. The natives had built 
mills and owned ships ; they had learnt husbandry and cattle- 
breeding ; they had invested money, and put acre to acre and 
house to house ; but their moral could hardly have kept pace 
with their material, or even with their mental gains. 



CHAP, v.] THE MAORIES. 275 

A magistrate who knows the Maories well, told me that their 
Christianity is only on the surface. He one day asked Matene 
te Whiwhi, a Ngatiraukawa chief, " Which would you soonest 
eat, Matene — pork, beef, or Ngatiapa ?" Matene answered, 
with a turn-up of his eyes, "Ah ! I'm a Christian !" "Never 
mind that to me, you know," said the Englishman. "The flesh 
of the Ngatiapa is sweet," said Matene, with a smack of the 
Ups that was distinctly audible. The settlers tell you that when 
the Maories go to war, they use up their Bibles for gun-wadding, 
and then come on the missionaries for a fresh supply. 

The Polynesians, when Christianity is first presented to them, 
embrace it with excitement and enthusiasm ; the " new rehgion" 
spreads like wildfire ; the success of the teachers is amazing. A 
few years, however, show a terrible change. The natives find 
that all white men are not missionaries ; that if one set of 
Englishmen deplore their licentiousness, there are others to 
back them in it ; that Christianity requires self-restraint. As 
soon as the first flare of the new religion is over, it begins to 
decline, and in some cases it expires. The story of Christianity 
in Hawaii, in Otaheite, and in New Zealand, has been much 
the same : among the Tahitians it was crushed by the relapse 
of the converts into extreme licentiousness ; among the Maories 
it was put down by the sudden rise of the Hau-Hau fanaticism. 
A return to a better state of things has in each case followed, 
but the missionaries work now in a depressed and saddened 
way, which contrasts sternly with the exultation that inspired 
them before the fresh outbreak of the demon which they 
believed they had exorcised. I'hey reluctantly admit that the 
Polynesians are fickle as well as gross ; not only licentious, but 
untrustworthy. There is, they will tell you, no country where 
it is so easy to plant or so hard to maintain Christianity, 

The Maori religion is that of all the Polynesians — a vague 
polytheism, which in their poems seems now and then to 
approach to pantheism. The forest glades, the mountain rocks, 
the stormy shores, all swarm with fairy singers, and with throngs 
of gnomes and elves. The happy laughing islanders have a 
heaven, but no hell in their mythology ; of " sin " they have no 
conception. Hau-Hauism is not a Polynesian creed, but a 
political and religious system based upon the earlier books of 

T 2 



2-6 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. r. 

the Old Testament; even the cannibaHsm which was added 
was not of the Maori kind. The Indians of ChiU ate human 
flesh for pleasure and variety ; those of Virginia were cannibals 
only on state occasions, or in religious ceremonials ; but the 
Maories seem originally to have been driven to man-eating by 
sheer want of food. Since Cook left pigs upon the islands, the 
excuse has been wanting, and the practice has consequently 
ceased. As revived by the Hau-Haus, the man-eating was 
of a ceremonial nature, and, like the whole of the observances 
of the Hau-Hau fanaticism, an inroad upon ancient Maori 
customs. 

There is one great difference which severs the Maories from 
the other Polynesians. In New Zealand caste is unknown ; 
every Maori is a gentleman or a slave. Chiefs are elected by 
the popular voice, not, indeed, by a show of hands, but by a 
sort of general agreement of the tribe ; but the chief is a political, 
not a social superior. In the windy climate of New Zealand, 
men can push themselves to the front too surely by their energy 
and toil to remain socially in an inferior class. Caste is im- 
possible where the climate necessitates activity and work. The 
Maories, too, we should remember, are an immigrant race ; 
probably no high- caste men came with them — all started from 
equal rank. 

Like the Tongans, the Maories pay great reverence to their 
well-born women ; slave women are of no account. The Friendly 
Islanders exclude both man and woman slave from the Future 
Life ; but the Maori Rangatira not only admits his followers to 
heaven, but his wife to council. A Maori chief is as obedient 
to the warlike biddings, and as grateful for the praising glance 
or smile of his betrothed, as a planter-cavalier of Carolina, or a 
Cretan volunteer ; and even the ladies of New Orleans cannot 
have gone further than the wives of Hunia and Ihakara in 
spurring: on the men to war. The Maori Andromaches outdo 
their European sisters, for they themselves proceed to battle, 
and animate their Hectors by songs and shouts. Even the 
sceptre of tribal rule — the greenstone meri, or royal club — is 
often entrusted to them by their warrior husbands, and used to 
lead the war-dance or the charge. 

The delicacy of treatment shown by the Maories towards 



CHAP, v.] THE MAORIES. 277 

their women may go far to account for the absence of contempt 
for the native race among the EngUsh population. An EngUsh- 
man's respect for the sex is terribly shocked when he sees a 
woman staggering under the weight of the wigwam and the 
children of a " brave," who stalks behind her through the streets 
of Austin, carrying his rifles and his pistols, but not another 
ounce, unless in the shape of a thong with which to hasten the 
squaw's steps. ■ What wonder if the men who sit by smoking 
while their wives totter under basketsful of mould on the 
boulevard works at Delhi are called lazy scoundrels by the 
press of the North-West, or if the Shoshone's, who eat the bread 
of idleness themselves, and hire out their wives to the Pacific 
Railroad Company, are looked upon as worse than dogs in 
Nevada, where the thing is done ? It is the New Zealand native's 
treatment of his wife that makes it possible for an honest 
Englishman to respect or love an honest Maori. 

In general, the newspaper editors and idle talkers of the 
frontier districts of a colony in savage lands speak with mingled 
ridicule and contempt of the men with whom they daily struggle ; 
at best, they see in them no virtue but ferocious bravery. The 
Kansas and Colorado papers call Indians "fiends," "devils," 
or dismiss them laughingly in peaceful times as " bucks," whose 
lives are worth, perhaps, a buffalo's, but who are worthy of 
notice only as potential murderers or thieves. Such, too, .is the 
tone of the Australian press concerning the aboriginal inhabi- 
tants of Queensland or Tasmania. Far otherwise do the New 
Zealand papers speak of the Maori warriors. They may some- 
times call them grasping, overreaching traders, or underrate 
their capability of receiving civilization of a European kind, but 
never do they affect to think them less than men, or to advocate 
the employment towards them of measures which would be 
repressed as infamous if applied to brutes. We should, I think, 
see in this peculiarity of conduct, not evidence of the existence 
in New Zealand of a spirit more catholic and tolerant towards 
savage neighbours than that which the English race displays in 
Austraha or America, but rather a tribute to the superiority in 
virtue, inteUigence, and nobility of mind possessed by the 
Maori over the Red Indian or the Austrahan Black. 

It is not only in their treatment of their women that the 



278 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. v. 

Maories show their chivalry. One of the most noble traits of 
this great people is their habit of " proclaiming " the districts in 
which hes the cause of war as the sole fighting-ground, and 
never touching their enemies, however defenceless, when found 
elsewhere. European nations might take a lesson from New 
Zealand Maories in this and other points. 

The Maories are apt at learning, merry, and, unlike other 
Polynesians ; trustworthy, but also, unlike them, mercenary. At 
the time of the Manawatu sale, old Aperahama used to write to 
Dr. Featherston almost every day : " O Petatone, let the price 
of the block be ;2^9,999,999 19^-. 9^.," the mysteries of eleven 
pence three-farthings being far beyond his comprehension. The 
Maories have, too, a royal magnificence in their ideas of gifts 
and grants — witness Te Heke's bid of 100,000 acres of land for 
Governor Fitzroy's head, in answer to the offer, by the Governor, 
of a small price for his. 

The praises of the Maories have been sung by so many 
writers, and in so many keys, that it is necessary to keep it 
distinctly before us that they are mere savages, though brave, 
shrewd men. There is an Eastern civilization — that of China 
and Hindostan — distinct from that of Europe, and ancient 
beyond all count ; in this the Maories have no share. No true 
Hindoo, no Arab, no Chinaman, has sufi'ered change in one 
tittle of his dress or manners from contact with the Western 
races ; of this essential conservatism there is in the New Zealand 
savage not a trace. William Thompson, the Maori "king- 
maker," used to dress as any Englishman ; Maories on board 
our ships wear the uniform of the able-bodied seaman ; Governor 
Hunia has ridden as a gentleman-rider in a steeplechase, equipped 
in jockey dress. 

Savages though they be, in irregular warfare we are not their 
match. At the end of 1865 we had of regulars and militia 
seventeen thousand men under arms in the North Island of 
New Zealand, including no less then twelve regiments of the 
line at their "war strength," and yet our generals were 
despondent as to their chance of finally defeating the warriors 
of a people which — men, women, and children — numbered but 
thirty thousand souls. 

Men have sought far and wide for the reasons which led to 



CHAP, v.] THE MAORIES. 279 

our defeats in the New Zealand wars. We were defeated by the 
Maories, as the Austrians by the Prussians, and the French by 
the English in old times — because the victors were the better 
men. Not the braver men, when both sides were brave alike ; 
not the stronger; not, perhaps, taking the average of our 
officers and men, the more intelligent ; but capable of quicker 
movement, able to subsist on less, more crafty, more skilled in 
the thousand, tactics of the bush. Aided by their women, who 
when need was, themselves would lead the charge, and who at 
all times dug their fern-root and caught their fish ; marching 
where our regiments could not follow, they had, as have the 
Indians in America, the choice of time and place for their 
attacks, and while we were crawling about our military roads 
upon the coast, incapable of traversing a mile of bush, the 
Maories moved securely and secretly from one end to the other 
of the island. Arms they had, ammunition they could steal, and 
blockade was useless with enemies who live on fern-root. When 
they found that we burnt their pahs, they ceased to build them ; 
that was all. When we brought up howitzers, they went where 
no howitzers could follow. It should not be hard even for our 
pride to allow that such enemies were, man for man, in their 
own la^nds our betters. 

All nations fond of horses, it has been said, flourish and 
succeed. The Maories love horses and ride well. All races 
that delight in sea are equally certain to prosper, empirical 
philosophers will tell us. The Maories own ships by the score, 
and serve as sailors whenever they get a chance : as deep-sea 
fishermen they have no equals. Their fondness for draughts 
shows mathematical capacity ; in truthfulness they possess the 
first of virtues. They are shrewd, thrifty ; devoted friends, 
brave men. With all this, they die. 

" Can you stay the surf which beats on Wanganui shore ?" 
say the Maories of our progress ; and, of themselves : " We 
are gone — like the moa.'' 



28o GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vi. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Two Flies. 

' ' As the Pakeha fly has driven out the Maori fly ; 
As the Pakeha grass has killed the Maori grass ; 
As the Pakeha rat has slain the Maori rat ; 
As the Pakeha clover has starved the Maori fern, 
So will the Pakeha destroy the Maori." 

These are the mournful words of a well-known Maori song. 

That the English daisy, the white clover, the common 
thistle, the camomile, the oat, should make their way rapidly 
in New Zealand, and put down the native plants, is in no way 
strange. If the Maori grasses that have till lately held undis- 
turbed possession of the New Zealand soil, require for their 
nourishment the substances A, B, and C, while the English 
clover needs A, B, and D ; from the nature of things A and B 
will be the coarser earths or salts, existing in larger quantities, 
not easily losing vigour and nourishing force, and recruiting 
their energies from the decay of the very plant that feeds on 
them ; but C and D will be the more ethereal, the more easily 
destroyed or wasted substances. The Maori grass, having 
sucked nearly the whole of C from the soil, is in a weakly state, 
when in comes the English plant, and, finding an abundant 
store of untouched D, thrives accordingly, and crushes down 
the Maori. 

The positions of flies and grasses, of plants and insects, are, 
however, not the same. Adapted by nature to the infinite 
variety of soils and climates, there are an infinite number of 
different plants and animals ; but whereas the plant depends 
upon both soil and climate, the animal depends chiefly upon 
climate, and little upon soil — except so far as his home or his 



CHAP. VI.] THE TWO FLIES. 281 

food themselves depend on soil. Now, while soil wears out, 
climate does not. The climate in the long run remains the 
same, but certain apparently trifling constituents of the soil 
will wholly disappear. The result of this is, that while pigs 
may continue to thrive in New Zealand for ever and a day, 
Dutch clover (without manure) will only last a given and calcu- 
lable time. 

The case of the flies is plain enough. The Maori and the 
English fly live on the same food, and require about the same 
amount of warmth and moisture : the one which is best fitted 
to the common conditions will gain the day, and drive out the 
other. The English fly has had to contend not only against 
other English flies, but against every fly of temperate climates : 
we having traded with every land, and brought the flies of every 
clime to England. The English fly is the best possible fly of 
the whole world, and will naturally beat down and exterminate, 
or else stance out, the merely provincial Maori fly. If a great 
singer — to find whom for the London stage the world has been 
ransacked — should be led by the foible of the moment to sing 
for gain in an unknown village, where on the same night a 
rustic tenor was attempting to sing his best, the London tenor 
would send the provincial supperless to bed. So it is with the 
English and Maori fly. 

Natural selection is being conducted by nature in New 
Zealand on a grander scale than any we have contemplated, 
for the object of it here is man. In America, in Australia, the 
white man shoots or poisons his red or black fellow, and exter- 
minates him through the workings of superior knowledge ; but 
in New Zealand it is peacefully, and without extraordinary 
advantages, that the Pakeha beats his Maori brother. 

That which is true of our animal and vegetable productions 
is true also of our man. The English fly, grass, and man, they 
and their progenitors before them, have had to fight for life 
against their fellows. The Englishman, bringing into his 
country from the parts to which he trades all manner of men, 
of grass seeds, and of insect germs, has filled his land with 
every kind of living thing to which his soil or climate will 
afford support. Both old inhabitants and interlopers have to 
maintain a struggle which at once crushes and starves out of 



282 GREATER BRITAIN. fcnAP. yi. 

life every weakly plant, man, or insect, and fortifies the race by 
continual buffetings. The plants of civilized man are generally 
those which will grow best in the greatest variety of soils and 
climates; but in any case, the English fauna and flora are 
peculiarly fitted to succeed at our antipodes, because the 
climates of Great Britain and New Zealand are almost the 
same, and our men, flies, and plants — the " pick " of the whole 
world — have not even to encounter the difficulties of acclimati- 
zation in their struggle against the weaker growths indigenous 
to the soil. 

Nature's work in New Zealand is not the same as that which 
she is quickly doing in North America, in Tasmania, in Queens- 
land. It is not merely that a hunting and fighting people is 
being replaced by an agricultural and pastoral people, and must 
farm or die : the Maori does farm ; Maori chiefs own villages, 
build houses, which they let to European settlers ; we have 
here Maori sheep-farmers, Maori shipowners, Maori mechanics, 
Maori soldiers, Maori rough-riders, Maori sailors, and even 
Maori traders. There is nothing which the average English- 
man can do which the average Maori cannot be taught to do as 
cheaply and as well. Nevertheless, the race dies out. The 
Red Indian dies because he cannot farm \ the Maori farms, 
and dies. 

There are certain special features about this advance of the 
birds, beasts, and men of Western civilization. When the first 
white man landed in New Zealand, all the native quadrupeds 
save one, and nearly all the birds and river-fishes, were extinct, 
though we have their bones and traditions of their existence. 
The Maories themselves were dying out. The dinoris was 
gone ; there were few insects, and no reptiles. " The birds die 
because the Maories, their companions, die," is the native 
saying. Yet the climate is singularly good, and food for beast 
and bird so plentiful that Captain Cook's pigs have planted 
colonies of "wild boars" in every part of the islands, and 
English pheasants have no sooner been imported than they 
have begun to swarm in every jungle. Even the Pakeha flea 
has come over in the ships, and wonderfully has he thriven. 

The terrible want of food for men that formerly characterised 
New Zealand has had its effects upon the habits of the Maori 



CHAP. VI.] THE TWO FLIES. 283 

race. Australia has no native fruit-trees worthy cultivation, 
although in the whole world there is no such climate and soil 
for fruits ; still, Australia has kangaroos and other quadrupeds. 
The Ladrones were destitute of quadrupeds, and of birds, 
except the turtle-dove ; but in the warm damp climate fruits 
grew, sufficient to support in comfort a dense population. In 
New Zealand, the windy cold of the winters causes a need for 
something of a tougher fibre than the banana or the fern-root. 
There being no native beasts, the want was supplied by human 
flesh ; and war, furnishing at once food and the excitement 
which the chase supplies to peoples that have animals to hunt, 
became the occupation of the Maories. Hence in some degree 
the depopulation of the land ; but other causes exist, by the 
side of which cannibalism is as nothing. 

The British Government has been less guilty than is commonly 
believed as regards the destruction of the Maories. Since the 
original misdeed of the annexation of the isles, we have done 
the Maories no serious wrong. We recognised the claim of a 
handful of natives to the soil of a country as large as Great 
Britain, of not one-hundredth part of which had they ever 
made the smallest use ; and, disregarding the fact that our 
occupation of the coast was the very event that gave the land 
its value, we have insisted on buying every acre from the tribes. 
Allowing title by conquest to the Ngatiraukawa, as I saw at 
Parewanui Pah, we refuse to claim even the lands we conquered 
from the " Kingites." 

The Maories have always been a village people, tilling a little 
land round their pahs, but incapable of making any use of the 
great pastures and wheat countries which they " own." Had 
we at first constituted native reserves, on the American system, 
we might, without any fighting, and without any more rapid 
destruction of the natives than that which is taking place, have 
gradually cleared and brought into the market nearly the whole 
country, which now has to be purchased at enormous prices, 
and at the continual risk of war. 

As it is, the record of our dealings with the Queen's native 
subjects in New Zealand has been almost free from stain ; but 
if we have not committed crimes, we have certainly not failed 
to blunder : our treatment of William Thompson was at the 



284 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vi. 

best a grave mistake. If ever there lived a patriot, he was 
one, and through him we might have ruled in peace the Maori 
race. Instead of receiving the simplest courtesy from a people 
which in India showers honours upon its puppet kings and 
rajahs, he underwent fresh insults each time that he entered an 
English town or met a white magistrate or subaltern, and he 
died while I was in the colonies — according to Pakeha phy- 
sicians, of liver-complaint ; according to the Maories, of a 
broken heart. 

At Parewanui and Otaki, I remarked that the half-breeds are 
fine fellows, possessed of much of the nobility of both the 
ancestral races, while the women are famed for grace and 
loveliness. In miscegenation it would have seemed that there 
was a chance for the Maori, who, if destined to die, would at 
least have left many of his best features of body and mind to 
live in the mixed race ; but here comes in the prejudice of 
blood, with which we have already met in the case of the 
negroes and Chinese. Morality has so far gained ground as 
greatly to check the spread of permanent illegitimate con- 
nexions with native women, while pride prevents intermarria-ge. 
The numbers of the half-breeds are not upon the increase : a 
few fresh marriages supply the vacancies that come of death, 
but there is no progress, no sign of the creation of a vigorous 
mixed race. There is something more in this than foolish 
pride, however ; there is a secret at the bottom at once of the 
cessation of mixed marriages and of the dwindling of the 
pure Maori race — and it is the utter viciousness of the native 
girls. The universal unchastity of the unmarried women, 
" Christian " as well as heathen, would be sufficient to destroy 
a race of gods. The story of the Maories is that of the 
Tahitians, and is written in the decorations of every gate-post 
or rafter in their pahs. 

We are more distressed at the present and future of the 
Maories than they are themselves. For all our greatness, we 
pity not the Maories more profoundly than they do us when, 
ascribing our morality to calculation, they bask in the sunlight, 
and are happy in their gracelessness. After all, virtue and 
arithmetic come from one Greek root. 



285 



CHAPTER VII, 

The Pacific. | 

Closely resembling Great Britain in situation, size, and climate, 
New Zealand is often styled by the colonists " The Britain of 
the South," and many affect to believe that her future is 
destined to be as brilliant as has been the past of her mother- 
country. With the exaggeration of phrase to which the Eng- 
lish New Zealanders are prone, they prophesy a marvellous 
hereafter for the whole Pacific, in which New Zealand, as the 
carr}'ing and manufacturing country, is to play the foremost 
part, the Australias following obediently in her train. 

Even if the differences of Separatists, Provincialists, and 
Centralists should be healed, the future prosperity of New Zea- 
land is by no means secure. Her gold yield is only about a 
fifth of that of California or Victoria, Her area is not 
sufiicient to make her powerful as an agricultural or pastoral 
country, unless she comes to attract manufactures and carrying 
trade from afar, and the prospect of New Zealand succeeding 
in this effort is but small. Her rivers are almost useless for 
manufacturing purposes, owing to their floods ; the timber- 
supply of all her forests is not equal to that of a single county 
in the State of Oregon ; her coal is inferior in quality to that 
of Vancouver Island, in quantity to that of Chili, in both 
respects to that of New South Wales. The harbours of New 
Zealand are upon the eastern coasts, but the coal is chiefly 
upon the other side, where the river bars make trade impos- 
sible. 

The coal that has been found at the Bay of Islands is said to 
be plentiful and of good quality, and may be made largely 
available for steamers on the coast ; the steel-sand of Taranaki, 



286 GREATER BRIT AM. [chap. vit. 

smelted. by the use of petroleum, also found within the province 
may become of value ; her own wool, too, New Zealand will 
doubtless one day manufacture into cloth and blankets ; but 
these are comparatively trifling matters : New Zealand may 
become rich and populous without being the great power of 
the Pacific, or even of the South. 

The climate of the North Island is winterless, moist, and 
warm, and its effects are already seen in a certain want of 
enterprise shown by the Government and settlers. I remarked 
that the mail-steamers which leave Wellington almost every 
day are invariably " detained for despatches : " it looks as 
though the officers of the Colonial or Imperial Government 
commence to write their letters only when the hour for the 
sailing of the ship has come. An Englishman visiting New 
Zealand was asked in my presence how long his business at 
Wanganui would keep him in the town. His answer was : 
^' In London it would take me half an hour; so I suppose 
about a week — about a week ! " 

In Java and the other islands of the Indian archipelago, we 
find examples of the effect of the supineness of dwellers in the 
tropics upon the economic position of their countries. Many, 
of the Indian isles possess both coal and cheap labour, but 
have failed to become manufacturing communities on a large 
scale only because the natives have not the energy requisite for 
the direction of factories and workshops, while European 
foremen have to be paid enormous wages, and, losing their 
spirit in the damp unchanging climate of the islands, soon 
become more indolent than the natives. 

The position of the various stores of coal in the Pacific is 
of extreme importance as an index to the future distribution of 
power in that portion of the world ; but it is not enough to 
know where coal is to be found without looking also to the 
quantity, quality, cheapness of labour, and facility for transport. 
In China (in the Si Shan district) and in Borneo, there are 
extensive coal-fields, but they lie " the wrong way " for trade. 
On the other hand, the Californian coal — at Monte Diablo, 
San Diego, and Monterey — lies well, but is bad in quality. 
The Talcahuano bed in Chili is not good enough for ocean 
steamers, but might be made use of for manufactures, although 



CHAP. VII.] THE PACIFIC. 287 

Chili has but little iron. Tasmania has good coal, but in no 
great quantity, and the beds nearest to the coast are formed of 
inferior anthracite. The three countries of the Pacific which 
must, for a time at least, rise to manufacturing greatness, are 
Japan, Vancouver Island, and New South Wales ; bat which of 
these will become wealthiest and most powerful depends mainly 
on the amount of coal which they respectively possess, so 
situated as to be cheaply raised. The deamess of labour under 
which Vancoiiver suffers will be removed by the opening of the 
Pacific Railroad, but for the present New South Wales has the 
cheaper labour-; and upon her shores at Newcastle are abun- 
dant stores of a coal of good quality for manufacturing purposes, 
although for sea use it burns " dirtily," and too fast : the colony 
possesses also ample beds of iron, copper, and lead. Japan, 
as far as can be at present seen, stands before Vancouver and 
New South Wales in almost every point : she has cheap labour, 
good climate, excellent harbours, and abundant coal ; cotton 
can be grown upon her soil, and this, and that of Queensland, 
she can manufacture and export to America and to the East. 
Wool from California and from the Australias might be carried 
to her to be worked, and her rise to commercial greatness has 
already commenced with the passage of a law allowing Japanese 
workmen to take service with European capitalists in the 
" treaty-ports." Whether Japan or New South Wales is 
destined to become the great wool-manufacturing country, it is 
certain that fleeces will not long continue to be sent half round 
the world — from Australia to England — to be worked, and 
then round the other half back from England to Australia, to 
be sold as blankets. 

The future of the Pacific shores is inevitably brilliant ; but it 
is not New Zealand, the centre of the water-hemisphere, which 
will occupy the position that England has taken in the Atlantic, 
but some country, such as Japan or Vancouver, jutting out into 
the ocean from Asia or from America, as England juts out 
from Europe. If New South Wales usurps the position, it will 
be not from her geographical situation, but from the manufac- 
turing advantages she gains by the possession of vast mineral 
wealth. 

The power of America is now predominant in the Pacific : 



288 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. yii. 

the Sandwich Islands are all but annexed, Japan all but ruled 
by her, while the occupation of British Columbia is but a matter 
of time, and a descent upon the Marquesas is already planned. 
The relations of America and Australia will be the key to the 
future of the South Pacific. 

vr 4r ^ % % 

On the 26th of December, I left New Zealand for Australia. 



PART III. 



AUSTRALIA. 



U 



292 GREATEB BRITAIN. [chap. i. 

Australasia is a term much used at home to express the whole 
of our Antipodean possessions ; in the colonies themselves the 
name is almost unknown, or, if used, is meant to embrace 
Australia and Tasmania, not Australia and New Zealand. The 
only reference to New Zealand, except in the way of foreign 
news, that I ever found in an Australian paper, was a congratu- 
latory paragraph on the great amount of the New Zealand debt ; 
the only allusion to Australia that I detected in the Wellington 
I?idependentwd.s in a glance at the future of the colony, in which 
the editor predicted the advent of a time when New Zealand 
would be a naval nation, and her fleet engaged in bombarding 
Melbourne, or levying contributions upon Sydney. 

New Zealand, though a change for the better is at hand, has 
hitherto been mainly an aristocratic country; New South Wales 
and Victoria mainly democratic. Had Australia and New 
Zealand been close together, instead of as far apart as Africa 
and South America, there could have been no political connexion 
between them so long as the traditions of their first settlement 
endured. Not only is the name " Australasia " politically 
meaningless, however, but it is also geographically incorrect, for 
New Zealand and Australia are as completely separated from 
each other as Great Britain and Massachusetts. No promontory 
of Austraha runs out to within looo miles of any New Zealand 
cape ; the distance between Sydney and Wellington is 1400 
miles j from Sydney to Auckland is as far. The distance from 
the nearest point of New Zealand of Tasman's peninsula, which 
itself projects somewhat from Tasmania, is greater than that of 
London from Algiers : from Wellington to Sydney, opposite 
ports, is as far as from Manchester to Iceland, or from Africa 
to Brazil. 

The sea that lies between the two great countries of the 
South is not, like the Central or North Pacific, a sea bridged 
with islands, rufiied with trade winds, or overspread with a calm 
that permits the presence of light-draught paddle steamers. The 
seas which separate Australia from New Zealand are cold, 
bottomless, without islands, torn by Arctic currents, swept by 
polar gales, and traversed in all weathers by a mountainous 
swell. After the gale of Christmas-day, we were blessed with a 
continuance of light breezes on our way to Sydney, but never 



CHAP. I.] SYDNEY. 293 

did we escape the long rolling hills of seas that seemed to surge 
up from the Antarctic pole : our screw was as often out of as in 
the water ; and, in a fast new ship, we could scarcely average 
nine knots an hour throughout the day. The ship which had 
brought the last Australian mail to Wellington before we sailed 
was struck by a sea which swept her from stem to stern, and 
filled her cabins two feet deep; and this in December, which 
here is Midsummer, and answers to our July. Not only is the 
intervening ocean wide and cold, but New Zealand presents to 
Australia a rugged coast guarded by reefs and bars, and backed 
by a snowy range, while she turns towards Polynesia and 
America all her ports and bays. 

No two countries in the world are so wholly distinct as 
Australia and New Zealand. The islands of New Zealand are 
inhabited by Polynesians, the Australian continent by negroes ; 
New Zealand is ethnologically nearer to America, Australia to 
Africa, than New Zealand to Australia. 

If we turn from ethnology to scenery and climate, the countries 
are still more distinct. New Zealand is one of the groups of 
volcanic islands that stud the Pacific throughout its whole 
extent ; tremendous clifi"s surround it on almost every side ; a 
great mountain chain runs through both islands from north to 
south ; hot springs abound, often close to glaciers and eternal 
snows ; earthquakes are common, and active volcanoes not un- 
known. The New Zealand climate is damp and windy ; the 
land is covered in most parts with a tangled jungle of tree-ferns, 
creepers, and parasitic plants ; water never fails, and, though 
winter is unknown, the summer heat is never great ; the islands 
are always green. Australia has for the most part flat, yellow, 
sun-burnt shores ; the soil may be rich, the country good for 
wheat and sheep, but to the eye it is an- arid plain ; the winters 
are pleasant, but in the hot weather the thermometer rises 
higher than it does in India, and dust storms and hot winds 
sweep the land from end to end. It is impossible to conceive 
countries more unlike each other than are our two great 
dominions of the south. Their very fossils are as dissimilar as 
are their flora and fauna of our time. 

At dawn of the first day of the new year we sighted the 
rocks where the Dimcan Dunbar was lost with all hands, and a 



294 GB EATER BRITAIN. [chap, i. 

few minutes afterwards we were boarded by the crew^ engaged 
by the Sidney Morning Herald, who had been lying at " The 
Heads " all night, to intercept our news and telegraph it to the 
city. The pilot and regular news-boat hailed us a little later 
when we had fired a gun. The contrast between this Austra- 
lian energy and the supineness of the New Zealanders was 
striking, but not more so than that between my first view of 
Australia and my last view of New Zealand. Six days earlier I 
had lost sight of the snowy peak of Mount Egmont, graceful as 
the Cretan Ida, while we ran before a strong breeze, in the 
bright English sunlight of the New Zealand afternoon, the 
albatrosses screaming around our stern : to-day, as we steamed 
up Port Jackson, towards Sydney Cove, in the dead stillness 
that follows a night of oven-like heat, the sun rose flaming in a 
lurid sky, and struck down upon brown earth, yellow grass, and 
the thin shadeless foliage of the Australian bush ; while, as we 
anchored, the ceaseless chirping of the crickets in the grass and 
trees struck harshly on the ear. 

The harbour, commercially the finest in the world, is not 
without a singular beauty if seen at the best time. By the 
" hot-wind sunrise," as I first saw it, the heat and glare destroy 
the feeling of repose which the endless succession of deep, 
sheltered coves would otherwise convey ; but if it be seen from 
shore in the afternoon, when the sea-breeze has sprung up, 
turning the sky from red to blue, all is changed. From a neck 
of land that leads out to the Government House, you catch a 
glimpse of an arm of the bay on either side, rippled with the 
cool wind, intensely blue, and dotted with white sails : the 
brightness of the colours that the sea-breeze brings almost 
atones for the wind's unhealthiness. 

In the upper portion of the town, the scene is less pic- 
turesque ; the houses are of the commonplace English ugliness, 
worst of all possible forms of architectural imbecility ; and are 
built, too, as though for English fogs, instead of semi-tropical 
heat and sun. Water is not to be had, and the streets are 
given up to clouds of dust, while not a single shade-tree breaks 
the rays of the almost vertical sun. 

The afternoon of New Year's day I spent at the " Midsummer 
Meeting " of the Sydney Jockey Club, on the race-course near 



CHAP. I.] . SYDNEY. 295 

the city, where I found a vast crowd of holiday-makers assembled 
on the bare red earth that did duty for " turf," although there 
was a hot wind blowing, and the thermometer stood at 103° 
in the shade. For my conveyance to the race-course I trusted 
to one of the Australian Hansom cabs, made with fixed Vene- 
tian blinds on either side, so as to allow a free draught of air. 

The ladies in the grand stand were scarcely to be distinguished 
from Englishwomen in dress or countenance, but the crowd 
presented several curious types. The fitness of the term " corn- 
stalks " applied to the Australian-born boys was made evident 
by a glance at their height and slender build ; they have plenty 
of activity and health, but are wanting in power and weight. 
The girls, too, are slight and thin ; delicate, without being 
sickly. Grown men who have emigrated as lads and lived ten 
or fifteen years in New Zealand, eating much meat, spending 
their days in the open air, constantly in the saddle, are burly, 
bearded, strapping fellows, physically the perfection of the 
English race, but wanting in refinement and grace of mind, and 
this apparently by constitution; not through the accident of 
occupation or position. In Australia there is promise of a more 
intellectual nation : the young Australians ride as well, shoot as 
well, swim as well, as the New Zealanders ; are as little given to 
book-learning ; but there is more shrewd intelligence, more wit 
and quickness, in the sons of the larger continent. The Aus- 
tralians boast that they possess the Grecian climate, and every 
young face in the Sydney crowd showed me that their sky is not 
more like that of Attica than thev are like the old Athenians. 
The eager burning democracy that is springing up in the Aus- 
tralian great towns is as widely different from the republicanism 
of the older States of the American Union as it is from the 
good-natured conservatism of New Zealand, and their high 
capacity for personal enjoyment would of itself suffice to dis- 
tinguish the Australians from both Americans and British. 
Large as must be the amount of convict blood in New South 
Wales, there w^as no trace of it in the features of those present 
upon the race-course. The inhabitants of colonies which have 
never, received felon immigrants often cry out that Sydney is a 
convict city, but the prejudice is not borne out by the counte- 
nances of the inhabitants, nor by the records of local crime. 



296 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. i. 

The black stain has not yet wholly disappeared : the streets of 
Sydney are still a greater disgrace to civiUzation than are even 
those of London ; but, putting the lighter immoraHties aside, 
security for life and property is not more perfect in England 
than in New South Wales. The last of the bushrangers were 
taken while I was in Sydney. 

The race-day was followed by a succession of hot winds, 
during which only the excellence of the fruit-market made 
Sydney endurable. Not only are all the English fruits to be 
found, but plantains, guavas, oranges, loquats, pomegranates, 
pine-apples from Brisbane, figs of every kind, and the delicious 
passion-fruit abound ; and if the gum-tree forests yield no shady 
spots for picnics, they are not wanting among the rocks at 
Botany, or in the luxuriant orange-groves of Paramatta. 

A Christmas week of heat such as Sydney has seldom known 
was brought to a close by one of the heaviest southerly storms 
on record. During the stifling morning, the telegraph had 
announced the approach of a gale from the far south, but in the 
early afternoon the heat was more terrible than before, when 
suddenly the sky was dark with whirling clouds, and a cold 
blast swept through the streets, carrying a fog of sand, breaking 
roofs and windows, and dashing to pieces many boats. When 
the gale ceased, some three hours later, the sand was so deep 
in houses that here and there men's feet left footprints on the 
stairs. 

Storms of this kind, differing only one from another in 
violence, are common in the hot weather : they are known as 
" southerly bursters ;" but the early settlers called them " brick- 
fielders," in the belief that the dust they brought was whirled 
up from the kilns and brick-fields to the south of Sydney. The 
fact is that the sand is carried along for one or two hundred 
miles, from the plains in Dampier and Auckland counties ; for 
the Austrahan "burster" is one with the Punjaub dust-storm, 
and the " dirt-storm " of Colorado. 



297 



CHAPTER II. 

Rival Colonies. 

New South Wales, bom in 1788, and Queensland in 1859, 
the oldest and youngest of our Australian colonies, stand side 
by side upon the map, and have a common frontier of 700 
miles. 

The New South Welsh cast jealous glances towards the more 
recently founded States. Upon the brilliant prosperity of 
Victoria they look doubtingly, and, ascribing it merely to the 
gold-fields, talk of "shoddy;" but of Queensland — an agricul- 
tural country, with larger tracts of rich land than they them- 
selves possess — the Sydney folks are, not without reason, 
envious. 

A terrible depression is at present pervading trade and agri- 
culture in New South Wales. Much land near Sydney has 
gone out of cultivation ; hands are scarce, and the gold dis- 
coveries in the neighbouring colonies, by drawing off the surplus 
population, have made harvest labour unattainable. Many 
properties have fallen to one-third their former value, and the 
colony — a wheat-growing country — is now importing wheat and 
flour to the value of half-a-million sterling every year. 

The depressed condition of affairs is the result, partly of 
commercial panics following a period of inflation, partly of bad 
seasons, now bringing floods, now drought and rust, and partly 
of discouragement of immigration by the colonial democrats — a 
policy which, however beneficial to Australia it may in the long 
run prove, is for the moment ruinous to the sheep-farmers and 
to the merchants in the towns. On the other hand, the 
labourers for their part assert that the arrivals of strangers — 
at all events, of skilled artisans — are still excessive, and that 



298 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ii. 

all the ills of the colony are due to over-immigration and free 
trade. 

To a stranger, the rush of population and outpour of capital 
from Sydney, first towards Victoria, but now to Queensland and 
New Zealand, appear to be the chief among the causes of the 
momentary decline of New South Wales. Of immigrants there 
is at once an insufficient and an over-great supply. Respecta- 
ble servant-girls, carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, plasterers, and 
the like, do well in the colonies, and are always wanted ; of 
clerks, governesses, iron-workers, and skilled hands of manufac- 
turers, there is almost always an over-supply. By a perverse 
fate, these latter are the immigrants of whom thousands seek 
the colonies every year, in spite of the daily publication in Eng- 
land of dissuading letters. 

As the rivalry of the neighbour-colonies lessens in the lapse 
of time, the jealousy that exists between them will doubtless die 
away, but it seems as though it will be replaced by a political 
divergence, and consequent aversion, which will form a fruitful 
source of danger to the Australian confederation. 

In Queensland the great tenants of Crown lands — " squatters" 
as they are called — sheep-farmers holding vast tracts of inland 
country, are in possession of the government, and administer the 
laws to their own advantage. In New South Wales, power is 
divided between the pastoral tenants on the one hand, and the 
democracy of the towns upon the other. In Victoria, the 
democrats have beaten down the squatters, and in the interests 
of the people put an end to their reign ; but the sheep-farmers 
of Queensland and of the interior districts of New South 
Wales, ignoring wells, assert that the "up-country desert "or 
"unwatered tracts" can never be made available for agriculture, 
while the democracy of the coast point to the fact that the 
same statements were made only a few years back, of lands 
now bearing a prosperous population of agricultural settlers. 

The struggle between the great Crown tenants and the agri- 
cultural democracy, in Victoria already almost over, in New 
South Wales can be decided only in one way, but in Queens- 
land the character of the country is not entirely the same : the 
coast and river tracts are tropical bush-lands, in which sheep- 
farming is impossible, and in which sugar, cotton, and spices 



CHAP. II.] RIVAL COL OKIES. 299 

alone can be made to pay. To the copper, gold, hides, tallow, 
wool, which have hitherto formed the stereotyped list of Austra- 
lian exports, the Northern colony has already added ginger, 
arrowroot, tobacco, coffee, sugar, cotton, cinnamon, and quinine. 

The Queenslanders have not yet solved the problem of the 
settlement of a tropical country by Englishmen, and of its cul- 
tivation by English hands. The future, not of Queensland 
merely, but of Mexico, of Ceylon, of every tropical country, of 
our race, of free government itself, are all at stake ; but the 
success of the experiment that has been tried between Brisbane 
and Rockampton has not been great. The colony, indeed, has 
prospered much, quadruphng its population and trebling its 
exports and revenue in six years ; but it is the Darling Downs, 
and other table-land sheep-countries, or, on the other hand, the 
Northern gold-fields, which are the main cause of the prosperity; 
and in the sugar and cotton culture of the coast, coloured 
labour is now almost exclusively employed, with the usual effect 
of degrading field-work in the eyes of European settlers, and 
of forcing upon the country a form of society of the aristocra- 
tic type. 

It is possible that just as New England has of late forbidden 
to Louisiana the importation of Chinamen to work her sugar- 
fields, just as the Kansas radicals have declared that they will 
not recognise the Bombay Hammal as a brother, just as the 
Victorians have refused to allow the further reception of con- 
victs by West Australia, separated from their territories by 
1000 miles of desert, so the New South Welsh and Victorians 
combined may at least protest against the introduction of a 
mixed multitude of Bengalees, Chinamen, South Sea Islanders, 
and Malays to cultivate the Queensland coast plantations. If, 
however, the other colonies permit their Northern sister to con- 
tinue in her course of importing dark-skinned labourers, to 
form a peon population, a few years will see her a wealthy 
cotton and sugar-growing country, with all the vices of a slave- 
holding government, though without the name of slavery. The 
planters of the coast, united with the squatters of the table- 
lands or " Downs," will govern Queensland, and render union 
with the free colonies impossible, unless great gold discoveries 
take place and save the country to Australia. 



300 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ii. 

Were it not for the pride of race that everywhere shows 
itself in the acts of Enghsh settlers, there might be a bright side 
to the political future of the Queensland colony. The coloured 
labourers at present introduced — industrious Tongans, and 
active Hill-coolies from Hindostan, laborious, sober, and free 
from superstition — should not only be able to advance the com- 
mercial fortunes of Queensland as they have those of the 
Mauritius, but eventually to take an equal share in free govern- 
ment with their white employers. To avoid the gigantic evil 
of the degradation of hand labour, which has ruined morally 
as well as economically the Southern States of the American 
republic, the Indian, Malay, and Chinese labourers should be 
tempted to become members of land-holding associations. A 
large spice and sugar-growing population in Northern Queens- 
land would require a vast agricultural population in the South 
to feed it ; and the two colonies, hitherto rivals, might grow up 
as sister countries, each depending upon the other for the 
supply of half its needs. It is, however, worthy of notice that 
the agreements of the Queensland planters with the important 
dark-skinned field-hands provide only for the payment of wages 
m goods, di,t t\iQ Y2itQS of 6s. to los. a month. The "Goods" 
consist of pipes, tobacco, knives, and beads. Judging from the 
experience of California and Ceylon, there can be little hope of 
the admission of coloured men to equal rights by English 
settlers, and the Pacific islands offer so tempting a field to kid- 
napping skippers that there is much fear that Queensland may 
come to show us not merely semi-slavery, but peonage of that 
worst of kinds, in which it is cheaper to work the labourer to 
death than to " breed " him. 

Such is the present rapidity of the growth and rise to power 
of Queensland, such the apparent poverty of New South Wales, 
that were the question merely one between the Sydney wheat- 
growers and the cotton-planters of Brisbane and Rockampton, 
the sub-tropical settlers would be as certain of the foremost 
position in any future confederation, as they were in America 
when the struggle lay only between the Carolinas and New 
England. As it is, just as America was first saved by the coal 
of Pennsylvania and Ohio, Australia will be saved by the coal 
of New South Wales. Queensland possesses some small stores 



CHAP. II. J RIVAL COLONIES, 301 

of coal, but the vast preponderance of acreage of the great 
power of the future Ues in New South Wales. 

On my return from a short voyage to the north, I visited the 
coal-field of New South Wales at Newcastle, on the Hunter. 
The beds are of vast extent : they lie upon the banks of a 
navigable river, and so near to the surface that the best qualities 
are raised, in a country of dear labour, at Zs. or 9^-. the ton, and 
delivered on board ship for 12s. For manufacturing purposes 
the coal is perfect ; for steam-ship use it is, though somewhat 
" dirty," a serviceable fuel ; and copper and iron are found in 
close proximity to the beds. The Newcastle and Port Jackson 
fields open a brilliant future to Sydney in these times, when 
coal is king in a far higher degree than was ever cotton. To 
her black beds the colony will owe not only manufactures, 
bringing wealth and population, but that leisure which is be- 
gotten of riches — leisure that brings culture, and love of 
harmony and truth. 

Factories are already springing up in the neighbourhood of 
Sydney, adding to the whirl and the bustle of the town, and 
adding, too, to its enormous population, already disproportion- 
ate to that of the colony in which it stands. As the depot for 
much of the trade of Queensland and New Zealand, and as the 
metropolis of pleasure to which the wealthy squatters pour from 
all parts of Australia, to spend, rapidly enough, their hard-won 
money, Sydney would in any case have been a populous city ; 
but the barrenness of the country in which it stands has, until 
the recent opening of the railroads, tended still further to 
increase its size, by failing to tempt into the country the Euro- 
pean immigrants. The Irish in Sydney form a third of the 
population, yet hardly one of these men but meant to settle 
upon land when he left his native island. 

In France there is a tendency to migrate to Paris; in 
Austria, a continual drain towards Vienna ; in England, towards 
London. A corresponding tendency is observable throughout 
Australia and America. Immigrants hang about New York, 
Philadelphia, Boston, Sydney, Melbourne ; and, finding that 
they can scrape a living in these large cities with toil somewhat 
less severe than that which would be needed to procure them a 
decent livelihood in the bush, the unthrifty as well as the dissi- 



302 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ii. 

pated throng together in densely-populated "rookeries" in the 
cities, and render the first quarter of New York and the so-called 
" Chinese " quarter of Melbourne an insult to the civilization of 
the world. 

In the case of Australia this concentration of population is 
becoming more remarkable day by day. Even under the system 
of free selection, by which the Legislature has attempted to 
encourage agricultural settlement, the moment a free selector 
can make a little money he comes to one of the capitals to 
spend it. Sydney is the city of pleasure, to which the wealthy 
Queensland squatters resort to spend their money, returning to 
the North for fresh supplies only when they cannot afford another 
day of dissipation, while Melbourne receives the outpour of 
Tasmania. 

The rushing to great cities the moment there is money to be 
spent, characteristic of the settlers in all these colonies, is much 
to be regretted, and presents a sad contrast to the quiet stay-at- 
home habits of American farmers. Everything here is fever and 
excitement ; — as in some systems of geometry, motion is the 
primary, rest the derived idea. New South Welshmen tell you 
that this unquiet is peculiar to Victoria; to a new-comer, it 
seems as rife in Sydney as in Melbourne. 

Judging from the Colonial Government reports, which immi- 
grants are conjured by the inspectors to procure and read, and 
which are printed in a cheap form for the purpose, the New 
South Welsh can hardly wish to lure settlers into " the bush /' 
for in one of these documents, published while I was in Sydney, 
the curator of the Museum reported that in his explorations he 
never went more than twelve miles from the city, but that within 
that circuit he found seventeen distinct species of land-snakes, 
two of sea-snakes, thirty of lizards, and sixteen of frogs — seventy- 
eight species of reptiles rewarded him in all. The seventeen 
species of land-snakes found by him within the suburbs were 
named by the curator in a printed list ; it commenced with the 
pale-headed snake, and ended with the death-adder. 



303 



CHAPTER III. 

Victoria. 

The smallest of our southern colonies except Tasmania — one- 
fourth the size of New South Wales, one-eighth of Queensland, 
one-twelfth of West Australia, one-fifteenth of South Australia — 
Victoria is the wealthiest of the Australian nations, and, India 
alone excepted, has the largest trade of any of the dependencies 
of Great Britain. 

W^hen Mr. Fawkner's party landed in 1835 upon the Yarra 
banks, mooring their boat to the forest trees, they formed a 
settlement upon a grassy hill behind a marsh, and began to 
pasture sheep where Melbourne, the capital, now stands. In 
twenty years, Melbourne became the largest city but one in the 
southern hemisphere, having 150,000 people within her limits 
or those of the suburban towns. Victoria has grander public 
buildings in her capital, larger and more costly railroads, a 
greater income, and a heavier debt than any other colony, and 
she pays to her Governor ;£"io,ooo a year, or one-fourth more 
than even New South Wales. 

When looked into, all this success means gold. There is 
industr}^, there is energy, there is talent, there is generosity and 
public spirit, but they are the abilities and virtues that gold will 
bring, in bringing a rush from all the world of dashing fellows 
in the prime of life. The progress of Melbourne is that of San 
Francisco ; it is the success of Hokitika on a larger scale, and 
refined and steadied by having lasted through some years — the 
triumph of a population which has hitherto consisted chiefly of 
adult males. 

Sydney people, in their jealousy of the Victorians, refuse to 
admit even that the superior energy of the Melbourne men is a 



302 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ii. 

pated throng together in densely-populated "rookeries" in the 
cities, and render the first quarter of New York and the so-called 
" Chinese " quarter of Melbourne an insult to the civilization of 
the world. 

In the case of Australia this concentration of population is 
becoming more remarkable day by day. Even under the system 
of free selection, by which the Legislature has attempted to 
encourage agricultural settlement, the moment a free selector 
can make a little money he comes to one of the capitals to 
spend it. Sydney is the city of pleasure, to which the wealthy 
Queensland squatters resort to spend their money, returning to 
the North for fresh supplies only when they cannot afford another 
day of dissipation, while Melbourne receives the outpour of 
Tasmania. 

The rushing to great cities the moment there is money to be 
spent, characteristic of the settlers in all these colonies, is much 
to be regretted, and presents a sad contrast to the quiet stay-at- 
home habits of American farmers. Everything here is fever and 
excitement ; — as in some systems of geometry, motion is the 
primary, rest the derived idea. New South Welshmen tell you 
that this unquiet is peculiar to Victoria; to a new-comer, it 
seems as rife in Sydney as in Melbourne. 

Judging from the Colonial Government reports, which immi- 
grants are conjured by the inspectors to procure and read, and 
which are printed in a cheap form for the purpose, the New 
South Welsh can hardly wish to lure settlers into " the bush /' 
for in one of these documents, published while I was in Sydney, 
the curator of the Museum reported that in his explorations he 
never went more than twelve miles from the city, but that within 
that circuit he found seventeen distinct species of land-snakes, 
two of sea-snakes, thirty of lizards, and sixteen of frogs — seventy- 
eight species of reptiles rewarded him in all. The seventeen 
species of land-snakes found by him within the suburbs were 
named by the curator in a printed list ; it commenced with the 
pale-headed snake, and ended with the death-adder. 



303 



CHAPTER III. 

Victoria. 

The smallest of our southern colonies except Tasmania — one- 
fourth the size of New South Wales, one-eighth of Queensland, 
one-twelfth of West Australia, one-fifteenth of South Australia — 
Victoria is the wealthiest of the Australian nations, and, India 
alone excepted, has the largest trade of any of the de^Dendencies 
of Great Britain. 

When Mr. Fawkner's party landed in 1835 upon the Yarra 
banks, mooring their boat to the forest trees, they formed a 
settlement upon a grassy hill behind a marsh, and began to 
pasture sheep where Melbourne, the capital, now stands. In 
twenty years, Melbourne became the largest city but one in the 
southern hemisphere, having 150,000 people within her limits 
or those of the suburban towns. Victoria has grander public 
buildings in her capital, larger and more costly railroads, a 
greater income, and a heavier debt than any other colony, and 
she pays to her Governor ;£" 10,000 a year, or one-fourth more 
than even New South Wales. 

When looked into, all this success means gold. There is 
industry, there is energy, there is talent, there is generosity and 
public spirit, but they are the abilities and virtues that gold will 
bring, in bringing a rush from all the world of dashing fellows 
in the prime of life. The progress of Melbourne is that of San 
Francisco ; it is the success of Hokitika on a larger scale, and 
refined and steadied by having lasted through some years — the 
triumph of a population which has hitherto consisted chiefly of 
adult males. 

Sydney people, in their jealousy of the Victorians, refuse to 
admit even that the superior energy of the Melbourne men is a 



304. GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. hi. 

necessary consequence of their having been the pick of the 
spirited youths of all the world, brought together by the rush 
for gold. At the time of the first "find" in 185 1, all the reso- 
lute, able, physically strong do-noughts of Europe and America 
flocked into Port Philip, as Victoria was then called ; and such 
timid and weak men as came along with them being soon 
crowded out, the men of energy and tough vital force alone 
remained. 

Some of the New South Welsh, shutting their eyes to the 
facts connected with the gold-rush, assert so loudly that the 
Victorians are the refuse of California, or " Yankee scum," that 
when I first landed in Melbourne I expected to find street-cars, 
revolvers, big hotels, and fire-clubs, euchre, caucuses, and 
mixed drinks. I could discover nothing American about Mel- 
bourne except the grandeur of the public buildings and the 
width of the streets, and its people are far more thoroughly 
British than are the citizens of the rival capital. In many senses, 
Melbourne is the London, Sydney the Paris, of Australia. 

Of the surpassing vigour of the Victorians there can be no 
doubt ; a glance at the map shows the Victorian railways 
stretching to the Murray, while those of New South Wales are 
still boggling at the Green Hills, fifty miles from Sydney. Mel- 
bourne has carried off the Australian trade with the New Zealand 
gold-fields from Sydney, the nearer port. Melbourne imports 
Sydney shale, and makes from it mineral oil, before the Sydney 
people have found out its value ; and gas in Melbourne is 
cheaper than in Sydney, though the Victorians are bringing 
their coal five hundred miles from a spot only fifty miles from 
Sydney. 

It is possible that the secret of the superior energy of the 
Victorians may lie, not in the fact that they are more American, 
but more English, than the New South Welsh. The leading 
Sydney people are mainly the sons or grandsons of original 
settlers — " corn-stalks " reared in the semi-tropical climate of 
the coast ; the Victorians are full-blooded English immigrants, 
bred in the more rugged climes of Tasmania, Canada, or Great 
Britain, and brought only in their maturity to live in the exhi- 
larating air of Melbourne, the finest climate in the world for 
healthy men : Melbourne is hotter than Sydney, but its climate 



THE OLD AND THE NEW. 




BUSH SCEXERY. 




COLLIXS-STlsEET. EAST MELBOfKNE. 



' 



CHAP. III.] VICTORIA, ' 307 

is never tropical. The squatters on the Queensland downs, 
mostly immigrants from England, show the same strong vitality 
that the Melbourne men possess ; but their brother immigrants 
in Brisbane — the Queensland capital, where the languid breeze 
resembles that of Sydney — are as incapable of prolonged exer- 
tion as are the " corn-stalks." 

Whatever may be the causes of the present triumph of Mel- 
bourne over Sydney, the inhabitants of the latter city are far 
from accepting it as likely to be permanent. They cannot but 
admit the present glory of what they call the " Mushroom City." 
The magnificent pile of the new Post-office, the gigantic Trea- 
sury (which, when finished, wdll be larger than our own in Lon- 
don), the University, the Parliament House, the Union and 
Melbourne Clubs, the City Hall, the Wool Exchange, the via- 
ducts upon the Government railroad lines — all are Cyclopean 
in their architecture, all seem built as if to last for ever ; still, 
they say that there is a certain want of permanence about the 
prosperity of Victoria. When the gold discovery took place, in 
185 1, such a trade sprang up that the imports of the colony 
jumped from one million to twenty-five millions sterling in three 
years ; but, although she is now commencing to ship breadstuffs 
to Great Britain, exports and imports alike show a steady decrease. 
Considerably more than half of the hand-workers of the colony 
are still engaged in gold-mining, and nearly half the population 
is resident upon the gold-fields ; yet the yield shows, year by year, 
a continual decline. Had it not been for the discoveries in New 
Zealand, which have carried off the floating digger population, 
and for the wise discouragement by the democrats of the mono- 
polization of the land, there would have been distress upon the 
gold-fields during the last few years. The Victorian population 
is already nearly stationary, and the squatters call loudly for 
assisted immigration and free trade ; but the stranger sees 
nothing to astonish him in the temporary stagnation that 
attends a decreasing gold production. 

The exact economical position that Victoria occupies is easily 
ascertained, for her statistics are the most perfect in the world ; 
the arrangement is a piece of exquisite mosaic. The brilhant 
statistician who fills the post of Registrar-General to the colony, 
had the immense advantage of starting clear of all tradition, 

V 

X 2 



3o8 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iii. 

unhampered and unclogged ; and, as the Governments of the 
other colonies have for the last few years taken Victoria for 
model, a gradual approach is being made to uniformity of 
system. It was not too soon, for British colonial statistics are 
apt to be confusing. I have seen a list of imports in which 
one class consisted of ale, aniseed, arsenic, asafoetida, and 
astronomical instruments ; boots, bullion, and salt butter ; 
capers, cards, caraway seed ; gauze, gin, glue, and gloves ; 
maps and manure ; philosophical instruments and salt pork ; 
sandal-wood, sarsapariila, and smoked sausages. Alphabetical 
arrangement has charms for the official mind. 

Statistics are generally considered dull enough, but the statis- 
tics of these young countries are figure-poems. Tables that in 
England contrast jute with hemp, or this man with that man, 
here compare the profits of manufactures with those of agricul- 
ture, or pit against each other the powers of race and race. 

Victoria is the only country in existence which possesses a 
statistical history from its earliest birth ; but, after all, even 
Victoria falls short of Minnesota, where the settlers founded 
the " State Historical Society " a week before the foundation 
of the State. 

Gold, wheat, and sheep are the three staples of Victoria, and 
have each its party, political and commercial — diggers, agricul- 
tural settlers, and squatters — though of late the diggers and the 
landed democracy have made common cause against the squat- 
ters. Gold can now be studied best at Ballarat, and wheat at 
Clunes, or upon the Barrabool hills behind Geelong ; but I 
started first for Echuca, the head-quarters of the squatter 
interest, and metropofis of sheep, taking upon my way Kyneton, 
one of the richest agricultural districts of the colony, and also 
the once famous gold diggings of Bendigo Creek. 

Between Melbourne and Kyneton, where I made my first 
halt, the railway runs through undulating lightly-timbered 
tracts, free from underwood, and well grassed. By letting my 
eyes persuade me that the burnt-up herbage was a ripening 
crop of wheat or oats, I found a likeness to the views in the 
weald of Sussex, though the fohage of the gums, or eucalypti, is 
thinner than that of the English oaks. 

Riding from Kyneton to Carlsruhe, Pastoria, and the foot- 



CHAP. Ill,] TIC TORI A. 309 

hills of the " Dividing Range," I found the agricultural com- 
munity busily engaged on the harvest, and much excited upon 
the great thistle question. Women and tiny children were 
working in the fields, while the men were at Kyneton, trying 
in vain to hire harvest hands from Melbourne at less than 
£,2 \os. or ^3 a week and board. The thistle question was 
not less serious : the " thistle inspectors," elected under the 
" Thistle Prevention Act," had commenced their labours ; and 
although each man agreed with his friend that his neighbour's 
thistles were a nuisance, still he did not like being fined for not 
weeding out his own. The fault, they say, lies in the climate ; 
it is too good, and the English weeds have thriven. Great as 
was the talk of thistles, the fields in the fertile Kyneton district 
were as clean as in a well-kept English farm, and showed the 
clearest signs of the small farmer's personal care. 

Every one of the agricultural villages that I visited was a 
full-grown municipality. The colonial English, freed from the 
checks which are put by interested landlords to local govern- 
ment in Britain, have passed, in all the settlements, laws under 
which any village must be raised into a municipality on fifty of 
the villagers (the number varies in the difi'erent colonies) signing 
a requisition, unless within a given time a larger number sign a 
petition to the contrary effect. 

After a short visit to the bustling digging town of Castle- 
maine, I pushed on by train to Sandhurst, a borough of great 
pretensions, which occupies the site of the former digging camp 
at Bendigo. On a level part of the line between the two great 
towns, my train dashed through some closed gates, happily 
without hurt. The Melbourne Argus of the next day said that 
the crash had been the result of the signalman taking the fancy 
that the trains should wait on him, not he upon the trains, so 
he had " closed the gates, hoisted the danger signal, and 
adjourned to a neighbouring store to drink." On my return 
from Echuca, I could not find that he had been dismissed. 

When hands are scarce, and lives valuable not to the possessor 
only, but to the whole community, care to avoid accidents 
might be expected ; but there is a certain recklessness in all 
young countries, and not even in Kansas is it more observable 
than in Victoria and New South Wales. 



310 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. m. 

Sandhurst, like Castlemaine, straggles over hill and dale for 
many miles, the diggers preferring to follow the gold-leads, and 
build a suburb by each alluvial mine, rather than draw their 
supplies from the central spot. The extent of the worked-out 
gold-field struck me as greater than in the fields round Placer- 
ville ; but in California many of the old diggings are hidden by 
the vines. 

In Sandhurst, I could find none of the magnificent restaurants 
of Virginia city ; none of the gambling saloons of Hokitika ; 
ll and the only approach to gaiety among the diggers was made 

in a drinking-hall, where some dozen red-shirted, bearded men 
were dancing by turns with four well-behaved and quiet-looking 
German girls, who were paid, 'the constable at the gate informed 
me, by the proprietor of the booth. My hotel — "The Shamrock" 
— kept by New York Irish, was a thoroughly American house ; 
but digger civilization is everywhere American — a fact owing, 
no doubt, to the American element having been predominant in 
the first-discovered diggings — those of California. 

Digger revolts must have been feared when the Sandhurst 
Government Reserve was surrounded with a ditch strangely 
like a moat, and palings that bear an ominous resemblance to a 
Maori pah. In the mxorning I found my way through the 
obstructions, and discovered the police-station, and in it the 
resident magistrate, to whom I had a letter. He knew nothing 
of " Gumption Dick," Hank Monk's friend, but he introduced 
me to his intelligent Chinese clerk, and told me many things 
about the yellow diggers. The bad feeling between the English 
and the Chinese has not in the least died away. Upon the 
worked-out fields of Castlemaine and Sandhurst, the latter do 
what they please, and I saw hundreds of them washing quietly 
and quickly in the old Bendigo creek, finding an ample living 
in the leavings of the whites. So successful have they been 
that a few Europeans have lately been taking to their plan, and 
an old Frenchman who died here lately, and who, from his 
working persistently in worn-out fields, had always been thought 
to be a harmless idiot, left behind him twenty thousand pounds, 
obtained by washing in company with the Chinese. 

The spirit that called into existence the Ballarat anti-Chinese 
mobs is not extinct in Queensland, as I found during my stay 



CHAP. III.] VICTORIA. 311 

at Sydney. At the Crocodile Creek diggings in Northern 
Queensland, whither many of the Chinese from New South 
Wales have lately gone, terrible riots occurred the week after I 
landed in Australia. The English diggers announced their 
intention of "rolling up" the Chinese, and proceeded to 
" jump their claims " — that is, trespass on the mining plots ; 
for in Queensland the Chinese have felt themselves strong 
enough to purchase claims. The Chinese bore the robbery for 
some days, but at last a digger who had sold them a claim for 
^50 one morning, hammered the pegs into the soft ground the 
same day, and then "jumped the claim" on the pretence that 
it was not " pegged out." This was too much for the Chinese 
owner, who tomahawked the digger on the spot. The English 
at once fired the Chinese town, and even attacked the English 
driver of a coach for conveying Chinamen on his vehicle. 
Some diggers in North Queensland are said to have kept 
bloodhounds for the purpose of hunting Chinamen for sport, as 
the rowdies of the old country hunt cats with terriers. 

On the older gold-fields, such as those of Sandhurst and 
Castlemaine, the hatred of the English for the Chinese lies 
dormant, but it is not. the less strong for being free from phy- 
sical violence. The woman in a baker's shop near Sandhurst, 
into which I went to buy a roll for lunch, shuddered when she 
told me of one or two recent marriages between Irish " Biddies " 
and some of the wealthiest Chinese. 

The man against whom all this hatred and suspicion is directed 
is no ill-conducted rogue or villain. The chief of the police at 
Sandhurst said that the Chinese were " the best of citizens ;" a 
member of the Victorian Parliament, resident on the very edge 
of their quarter at Geelong, spoke of the yellow men to me as 
" well-behaved and frugal ;" the Registrar-General told me that 
there is less crime, great or small, among the Chinese, than 
among any equal number of English in the colony. 

The Chinese are not denied civil rights in Victoria, as they 
have been in California. Their testimony is accepted in the 
courts against that of whites ; they may become naturalized, 
and then can vote. Some twenty or thirty of them, out of 
30,000, have been naturalized in Victoria up to the present 
time. 



312 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iir. 

That the Chinese in AustraHa look upon their stay in the 
gold-fields as merely temporary is clear from the character of 
their restaurants, which are singularly inferior to those of San 
Francisco. The best in the colonies is one near Castlemaine, 
but even this is small and poor. Shark's fin is an unheard-of 
luxury, and even puppy you would have to order, " Silk- 
worms fried in castor-oil " is the colonial idea of a Chinese 
deHcacy ; yet the famous sea-slug is an inhabitant of Queens- 
land waters, and the Gulf of Carpentaria. 

From Sandhurst northwards, the country, known as Elysium 
Flats, becomes level, and is wooded in patches, like the " oak- 
opening" prairies of Wisconsin and Illinois. Within fifty 
miles of Echuca, the line comes out of the forest on to a vast 
prairie, on which was a marvellous mirage of water and trees 
at various step-like levels. From the other window of the 
compartment carriage (sadly hot and airless after the American 
cars), I saw the thin dry yellow grass on fire for a dozen miles. 
The smoke from these " bush-fires " sometimes extends for 
hundreds of miles to sea. In steaming down from Sydney to 
Wilson's Promontory on my way to Melbourne, we passed 
through a column of smoke about a mile in width when off 
Wolongong, near Botany Bay, and never lost sight of it, as it 
lay in a dense brown mass upon the sea, until we rounded 
Cape Howe, two hundred miles farther to the southward. 

The fires on these great plains are caused by the dropping 
of fusees by travellers as they ride along smoking their pipes, 
Australian fashion, or else by the spreading of the fires from 
their camps. The most ingenious stories are invented by the 
colonists to prevent us from throwing doubt upon their careful- 
ness, and I was told at Echuca that the late fires had been 
caused by the concentration of the sun's rays upon spots of 
grass owing to the accidental conversion into burning-glasses 
of beer-bottles that had been suffered to lie about. Whatever 
their cause, the fires, in conjunction with the heat, have made 
agricultural settlement upon the Murray a lottery. The week 
before my visit, some ripe oats at Echuca had been cut down 
to stubble by the hot wind, and farmers are said to count upon 
the success of only one harvest in every three seasons. On 
the other hand, the Victorian apricots, shrivelled by the hot 



CHAP. III.] VICTORIA. 313 

wind, are so many lumps of crystallized nectar when you pierce 
their thick outer coats. 

Defying the sun, I started off to the banks of the Murray 
river, not without some regret at the absence of the continuous 
street verandahs which in Melbourne form a first step towards 
the Italian piazza. One may be deceived by trifles when the 
character of an unknown region is at stake. Before reaching 
the country, I had read, " Steam-packet Hotel, Esplanade, 
Echuca ;" and, though experiences on the Ohio had taught me 
to put no trust in " packets and hotels," yet I had somehow 
come to the belief that the Murray must be a second Missouri 
at least, if not a Mississippi. The " esplanade " I found to be 
a myth, and the "fleet" of " steam-packets" was drawn up in 
a long line upon the mud, there being in this summer-weather 
no water in which it could float. The Murray in February is 
a streamless ditch, which in America, if known and named at 
all, would rank as a tenth-rate river. 

The St. Lawrence is 2200 miles in length, and its tributary, 
the Ottawa, 1000 miles in length ; itself receives a tributary 
stream, the Gatineau, with a course of 420 miles. At 217 
miles from its confluence with the Ottawa, the Gatineau is 
still 1000 feet in width. At Albury, which even in winter is 
the head of navigation on the Murray, you are only some 
600 or 700 miles by river from the open sea, or about the 
same distance as from Memphis in Tennessee to the mouth of 
the Mississippi. 

During six months of the year, however, the Murray is for 
wool-carrying purposes an important river. The railway to 
Echuca has tapped the river system in the Victorians' favour, 
and Melbourne has become the port of the back country of 
New South Wales, and even Queensland. " The Riverina is 
commercially annexed " to Victoria, said the Premier of New 
South Wales while I was in that colony, and the " Riverina " 
means that portion of New South Wales which lies between 
the Lachlan, the Murrumbidgee, and the Murray, to the north- 
ward of Echuca. 

Returning to the inn to escape the sun, I took up the 
Riverina Hei-ald^ published at Echuca ; of its twenty-four 
columns, nineteen and a half are occupied by the eternal sheep 



■^p 



314 GREATER BRIT AM. [chap. m. 

in one shape or another. A representation of Jason's fleece 
stands at the head of the title; " wool" is the first word in the 
first line of the body of the paper. More than half of the 
advertisements are those of wool-brokers, or else of the fortu- 
nate possessors of specifics that will cure the scab. One dis- 
infectant compound is certified to by no less than seventeen 
inspectors ; another is puffed by a notice informing flock- 
masters that, in cases of foot-rot, the advertiser goes upon the 
principle of "no cure, no pay." One firm makes " hberal 
advances on the ensuing clip ;" another is prepared to do the 
like upon "pastoral securities." Ship-chandlers, regardless of 
. associations, advertise in one line their bread and foot-rot oint- 
ment, their biscuit and sheep-wash solution ; and the last of 
the advertisements upon the front page is that of an " agent 
for the sale of fat." The body of the paper contains complaints 
against the judges at a recent show of wool, and an account of 
the raising of a sawyer "120 feet in length and 23 feet in 
girth " by the new " snagboat " working to clear out the river 
for the floating down of the next wool-clip. Whole columns 
of small type are filled with " impounding " lists, containing 
brief descriptions of all the strayed cattle of each district. 
The technicalities of the distinctive marks are surprising. Who 
not to the manner born can make much of this : " Blue and 
white cow, cock horns, 22 off-rump, IL off-ribs?" or of this : 
" Strawberry stag, top off off-ear, J. C. over 4 off-rump, like 
H. G. conjoined near loin and rump ?" This, again, is difiicult : 
" Swallow tail, off-ear, D reversed and illegible over F off-ribs, 
PT off-rump." What is a "blue strawberry bull?" is a question 
which occurred to me. Again, what a phenomenon is this : 
" White cow, writing capital A off-shoulder ?" A paragraph 
relates the burning of "^10,000 worth of country near Gam- 
bier," and advertisements of Colt's revolvers and quack medi- 
cines complete the sheet. The paper shows that for the most 
part the colonists here, as in New Zealand, have had the 
wisdom to adopt the poetic native names of places, and even 
to use them for towns, streets, and ships. Of the Panama 
liners, the Rakaia and Maitoiira bear the names of rivers, the 
Riiahine and the Kaikoura, names of mountain ranges ; and 
the colonial boats have for the most part famihar Maori or 



CHAP. III.] VICTORIA. lie, 

Australian names ; for instance, Ra7igitoto, " hill of hills," and 
Rangitira^ " great and good." The New Zealand colonists are 
better off than the Australian in this respect : Wongawonga, 
Yarrayarra, and Wooioomooloo are not inviting ; and some of 
the Australian villages have still stranger names. Nindooinbah 
is a station in Southern Queensland ; Yallack-a-yallack, Boron- 
gorong, Bunduramongee, Jabbarabbara, Thuroroolong, Yalla- 
y-poora, Yanac-a-Yanac, Wuid Kerruick, Woolonguwoong- 
wrinan, Woori Yalloak, and Borhoneyghurk, are stations in 
Victoria. The only leader in the Herald is on the meat ques- 
tion, but there is in a letter an account of the Christmas festivi- 
ties at Melbourne, which contains much merry-making at the 
expense of " unacclimatised new chums," as fresh comers to the 
colonies are called. The writer speaks rapturously of the rush 
on Christmas-day from the hot, dry, dusty streets to the 
" golden fields of waving corn." The " exposed nature of the 
Royal Park" prevented many excursionists from picnicking 
there, as they had intended ; but we read on, and find that the 
exposure dreaded was not to cold, but to the terrible hot wind 
which swept from the plains of the north-west, and scorched 
up every blade of grass in the open spots. We hear of Christ- 
mas dinners eaten upon the grass at Richmond in the sheltered 
shade of the gum-forest, but in the Botanical Gardens the 
" plants had been much affected by the trying heat," How- 
ever, "the weather on Boxing-day was more favourable for 
open-air enjoyment," as the thermometer was only 98° in the 
shade. 

Will ever New Zealand or Australian bards spring up to 
write of the pale primroses that in September commence to 
peep out from under the melting snows, and to make men look 
forward to the blazing heat of the long December days ? 
Strangely enough, the only EngHsh poem which an Australian 
lad can read without laughing at the old country conceit that 
connects frost with January, and hot weather with July, is 
Thomson's " Seasons," for in its long descriptions of the 
changes in England from spring to summer, from autumn to 
winter, a month is only once named : " rosy-footed May " 
cannot be said to " steal blushing on " in Australia, where May 
answers to our November. 



3i6 GREATER BIUTAIN. [chap. m. 

In the afternoon I ventured out again, and strolled into the 
gum-forest on the banks of the Campaspe river, not believing 
the reports of the ferocity of the bunyips and alligators which 
have lately scared the squatters who dwell on creeks. The 
black trees, relieved upon a ground of white dust and yellow 
grass, were not inviting, and the scorching heat soon taught me 
to hate the shadeless boughs and ragged bark of the inevitable 
gum. It had not rained for nine weeks at the time of my visit, 
and the thermometer stood at ii6° in the shade, but there was 
nothing oppressive in the heat ; it seemed only to dry up the 
juices of the frame, and dazzle you with intense brightness. I 
soon came to agree with a newly-landed Irish gardener, who 
told a friend of mine that Australia was a strange country, for 
he could not see that the thermometer had " the slightest effect 
upon the heat." The blaze is healthy, and fevers are unknown 
in the Riverina, decay of noxious matter, animal or vegetable, 
being arrested during the summer by the drought. This is a 
hot year, for on the 12th of January the thermometer, even at 
the Melbourne Observatory, registered 108° in the shade; and 
123° in the shade was registered at Wentworth, near the con- 
fluence of the Murray and the Darling. 

As the afternoon drew on, and, if not the heat, at least the 
sun declined, the bell-birds ceased their tuneful chiming, and 
the forest was vocal only with the ceaseless chirp of the tree- 
cricket, whose note recalled the goatsucker of our English 
woods. The AustraHan landscapes show best by the red light 
of the hot-weather sunsets, when the dark feathery foliage of 
the gum-trees comes out in exquisite relief upon the fiery fogs 
that form the sky, and the yellow earth, gaining a tawny hue 
in the lurid glare, throws off a light resembling that which in 
winter is reflected from our English snows. At sunset there 
was a calm, but, as I turned to walk homeward, the hot wind 
sprang up, and died again, while the trees sighed themselves 
uneasily to sleep, as though fearful of the morrow's blast. 

A night of heavy heat was followed by a breathless dawn, 
and the scorching sun returned in all its redness to burn up 
once more the earth, not cooled from the glare of yesterday. 
Englishmen must be bribed by enormous gains before they will 
work with continuous toil in such a climate, however healthy. 



317 



CHAPTER IV.. 

Squatter Aristocracy. 

" What is a Colonial Conservative ?" is a question that used 
to be daily put to a Victorian friend of mine when he was in 
London. His answer, he told me, was always, "A statesman 
who has got four of the ' points ' of the People's Charter, and 
wants to conserve them ;" but as used in Victoria, the term 
" Conservative " expresses the feeling less of a political party 
than of the whole of the people who have anything whatever to 
lose. Those who have something object to giving a share in 
the Government to those who have nothing ; those who have 
much, object to political equality with those who have less ; 
and, not content with having won a tremendous victory in 
basing the Upper House upon a ^5000 qualification'"" and 
;^ioo freehold or ^300 leasehold franchise, the plutocracy are 
meditating attacks upon the Legislative Assembly. 

The democracy hold out undauntedly, refusing all monetary 
tests, though an intelligence basis for the franchise is by no 
means out of favour, except with the few who. cannot read or 
write. One day, when I was driving from Melbourne to Sand- 
ridge, in company with a colonial merchant, he asked our car- 
driver : " Now, tell me fairly : do you think these rogues of 
fellows that hang about the shore here ought to have votes ?" 
" No, I don't." " Ah, you'd like to see a 5^. fee on registration, 
wouldn't you ?" The answer was sharp enough in its tone. 
" Five shillings would be nothing to you ; it would be some- 
thing to me, and it would be more than my brother could pay. 
What I'd' do would be to say that those who couldn't read 
shouldn't vote — that's all. That would keep out the loafers." 

The plutocratic party is losing, not gaining, ground in 

* Reduced in 1868. 



3i8 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iv. 

Victoria : it is far more likely that the present generation will 
see the Upper House abolished than that it will witness the 
introduction of restrictions upon the manhood suffrage which 
exists for the Lower ; but there is one branch of the plutocracy 
which actively carries on the fight in all the colonies, and which 
claims to control society — the pastoral tenants of Crown lands, 
or Squatter Aristocracy. 

The word "squatter" has undergone a remarkable change 
of meaning since the time when it denoted those who stole 
Government land, and built their dwellings on.it. As late as 
1837;, squatters were defined by the Chief Justice of New South 
Wales as people occupying lands without legal title, and subject 
to a fine on discovery. They were described as living by bar- 
tering rum with convicts for stolen goods, and as being them- 
selves invariably convicts or " expirees." Escaping suddenly 
from these low associations, the word came to be applied to 
graziers who drove their liocks into the unsettled interior, and 
thence to those of them who received leases from the Crown of 
pastoral lands. 

The squatter is the nabob of Melbourne and Sydney, the 
inexhaustible mine of wealth. He patronises balls, promenade 
concerts, flower-shows ; he is the mainstay of the great clubs, 
the joy of the shopkeepers, the good angel of the hotels ; with- 
out him the opera could not be kept up, and the jockey-club 
would die a natural death. 

Neither squatters nor tov/nsfolk will admit that this view of 
the former's position is correct. The Victorian squatters tell 
you that they have been . ruined by confiscation, but that their 
neighbours in New South Wales, who have leases, are more 
prosperous ; in New South Wales, they tell you of the destruc- 
tion of the squatters by " free selection," of which there is none 
in Queensland, " the squatter's paradise ;" but in Queensland 
the squatters protest that they have never made wages for their 
personal work, far less interest upon their capital. " Not one 
of us in ten is solvent," is their cry. 

As sweeping assertions are made by the townsfolk upon the 
other side. The squatters, they sometimes say, may well set 
up to be a great landed aristocracy, for they have every fault of 
a dominant caste except its generous vices. They are accused 



CHAP. IV.] SQUATTER ARISTOCRACY. 319 

of piling up vast hoards of wealth while living a most penurious 
hfe and contributing less than would so many mechanics to 
the revenue of the country, in order that they may return in 
later life to England, there to spend what they have wrung from 
the soil of Victoria or New South Wales. 

The occupation of the whole of the Crown lands by squatters 
has prevented the making of railways to be paid for in land, on 
the American system ; but the chief of all the evils connected 
with squatting is the tendency to the accumulation in a few 
hands of all the land and all the pastoral wealth of the country, 
an extreme danger in the face of democratic institutions, such 
as those of Victoria and New South Wales. Remembering 
that manufactures are few, the swelling of the cities shows how 
the people have been kept from the land ; considerably more 
than half of the population of Victoria lives within the corpo- 
rate towns. 

A few years back, a thousand men held between them, on. 
nominal rents, forty million acres out of the forty-three and a 
half million — mountain and swamp excluded — of which A^ictoria 
consists. It is true that the amount so held has now decreased 
to thirty millions, but on the other hand the squatters have 
bought vast tracts which were formerly within their " runs," 
with the capital acquired in squatting, and, knowing the 
country better than others could know it, have selected the 
most valuable land. 

The colonial democracy in i860 and the succeeding years 
rose to a sense of its danger from the land monopoly, and 
began to search about for means to put it down, and to destroy 
at the same time the system of holding from the Crown ; for it 
is singular that while in England there seems to be springing 
up a popular movement in favour of the nationahsation of the 
land, in the most democratic of the Australian colonies the 
tendency is from Crown-land tenure towards individual freehold 
ownership of the soil. Yet, here in Victoria there was a fair 
field to start upon, for the land already belonged to the State — 
the first of the principles included under the phrase, nationalised 
land. In America, again, we see that, with the similar advan- 
tage of State possession of territories which are still fourteen 
times the size of the French Empire, there is little or no ten- 



320 GREATER BRITAIN. . [chap. iv. 

dency towards agitation for the continuance of State ownership. 
In short, freehold ownership seems dear to the Anglo-Saxon 
race ; while the national land plan would commend itself 
rather to the Celtic races : to the Highlander, who remembers 
clanship, to the Irishman, who regrets the Sept. 

Since the Radicals have been in power, both here and in 
New South Wales, they have carried Act after Act to encourage 
agricultural settlers on freehold tenure, at the expense of the 
pastoral squatters. The " free selection " plan now in operation 
in New South Wales allows the agricultural settler to buy, but 
at a fixed price, the freehold of a patch of land, provided it be 
over forty acres, and less than 320, anywhere he pleases — even in 
the middle of a squatter's " run," if he enters at once, and com- 
mences to cultivate; and the Land Act of 1862 provides that 
the squatting licence system shall entirely end with the year 
1869. Forgetting that in every lease the Government reserved 
. the power of terminating the agreement for the purpose of the 
sale of land, the squatters complain that free selection is but 
confiscation, and that they are at the mercy of a pack of cattle- 
stealers and horse-thieves, who roam through the country 
haunting their runs like " ghosts," taking up the best land on 
their runs, " picking the eyes out of the land," as it is called, 
and turning to graze anywhere, on the richest grass, the sheep 
and cattle they have stolen on their way. The best of them, 
they say, are but " cockatoo farmers," living from hand to 
mouth on what they manage to grub and grow. On the other 
hand, the "free selection" principle "up country" is tempered 
by the power of the " wealthy squatter to impound the cattle of 
the poor little freeholder whenever he pleases to say that they 
stray on to his " run ;" indeed, " Pound them off, or if you 
can't, buy them off," has become a much-used phrase. The 
squatter, too, is protected in Victoria by such provisions as that 
" improvements " by him, if over .^40 on forty acres, cover an 
acre of land for each ^i. The squatters are themselves buying 
largely of land, and thus profiting by the free selection. To a 
stranger it seems as though the interests of the squatter have 
been at least sufficiently cared for, remembering the vital neces- 
sity for immediate action. In 1865, Victoria, small as she is, 
had not sold a tenth of her land. 



CHAP. IV.] SQUATTER ARISTOCRACY. 321 

In her free selectors, Victoria will gain a class of citizens 
whose political views will contrast sharply with the strong anti- 
popular sentiments of the squatters, and who, instead of spend- 
ing their lives as absentees, will stay, they and their children, 
upon the land, and spend all they make within the colony, 
while their sons add to its labouring arms. 

Since land has been, even to a limited extent, thrown open, 
Victoria has suddenly ceased to be a wheat-importing, and has 
become a wheat-exporting country. Flourishing agricultural 
communities, such as those of Ceres, Clunes, Kyneton, are 
springing up on every side, growing wheat instead of wool, 
while the wide extension which has in Victoria been given to 
the principle of local self-government in the shape of shire- 
councils, road-boards, and village-municipalities, allows of the 
union of the whole of the advantages of small and great farming, 
under the unequalled system of small holdings with co-operation 
for improvements among the holders. 



322 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. v. 



CHAPTER V. 

Colonial Democracy. 

Payment of members by the State was the great question under 
debate in the Lower House during much of the time I spent in 
Melbourne, and, in spite of all the efforts of the Victorian 
democracy, the bill was lost. The objection taken at home, 
that payment degrades the House in the eyes of the people, 
could never arise in a new country, where a practical nation 
looks at the salaries as payment for work done, and obstinately 
refuses to believe in the work being done without payment in 
some shape or other. In these colonies, the reasons in favour 
of payment are far stronger than they are in Canada or 
America, for while there country or town share equally the 
difficulties of finding representatives who will consent to travel 
hundreds and thousands of miles to Ottawa or Washington ; in 
the Australias, Parliament sits in towns which contain from 
one-sixth to one-fourth of the whole population, and under a 
non-payment system power is thrown entirely into the hands of 
Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Hobarton. 
Not only do these cities return none but their own citizens, but 
the country districts, often unable to find within their limits men 
who have sufficient time and money to be able to attend 
throughout the sessions at the capital, elect the city traders to 
represent them. 

Payment of members was met by a proposition on the part 
of the leader of the squatter party in the Upper House to carry 
it through that assembly if the Lower House would introduce 
the principle of personal representation ; but it was objected 
that under such a system the Catholics, who form a fifth of the 
population, might, if they chose, return a fifth of the members. 



CHAP, v.] COLONIAL DEMOCRACT. 323 

That they ought to be able to do so never seemed to strike 
friend or foe. The Cathohcs, who had a long turn of power 
under the O'Shaughnessey Government were finally driven out 
for appointing none but Irishmen to the police. " I always 
said this Ministry would go out on the back of a policeman," 
was the comment of the Opposition wit. The present Ministry, 
which is Scotch in tone, was hoisted into office by a great 
coalition against the Irish Catholics, of whom there are only a 
handful in the House. 

The subject of national education, which was before the 
colony during my visit, also brought the Catholics prominently 
forward ; for an episcopal pastoral was read in all their churches 
threatening to visit ecclesiastical censure upon Catholic teachers 
in the common schools, and upon the parents of the children 
who attend them. "Godless education" is as little popular 
here as it used to be at home, and the Anglican and Catholic 
clergymen insist that it is proposed to make their people pay 
heavily for an education in which it would be contrary to their 
conscience to share ; but the laymen seem less distressed than 
their pastors. It has been said that the reason why the Catholic 
bishop declined to be examined before the Education Com- 
mission was that he was afraid of this question : "Are you 
aware that half the Catholic children in the country are attend- 
ing schools which you condemn ?" 

The most singular, perhaps, of the spectacles presented by 
colonial politics during my visit was that of the Victorian 
Upper House going deliberately into committee to consider its 
constitution, with the view of introducing a bill for its own 
reform, or to meditate, its enemies said, upon self-destruction.* 
Whether the blow comes from within or without, there is every 
probability that the Upper House will shortly disappear, and 
the advice of Milton and Franklin be followed in having but a 
single chamber. It is not unlikely that this step will be fol- 
lowed by the demand of the Victorians to be allowed to choose 
their own Governor, subject to his approval by the Queen, with 
a view to making it impossible that needy men should be sent 
out to suck the colony, as they sometimes have been in the 

* A bill altering the franchise and qualification was passed in 1868, 

Y 2 



324 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. v. 

past The Australians look upon the liberal expenditure of a 
Governor as their own liberality, but upon meanness on his 
part as a robbery from themselves. . 

The Victorian have a singular advantage over the American 
democrats in being unhampered by a constitution of antiquity 
and renown. Constitution-tinkering is here continual ; the 
new society is ever re-shaping its political institutions to keep 
pace with the latest developments of the national mind ; in 
America, the party of liberty, at this moment engaged in 
remoulding in favour of freedom the worn-out constitution, 
dares not even yet declare that the national good is its aim, 
but keeps to the old watchwords, and professes to be treading 
in the footsteps of George Washington. 

The tone of Victorian democracy is not American. There 
is the defiant way of taking care of themselves and ignoring 
their neighbours, characteristic of the founders of English 
plantations in all parts of the world — the spirit which prompted 
the passing, in 1852, of the Act prohibiting the admission to 
the colony of convicts for three years after they had received 
their pardons ; but the English race here is not Latinized as it 
is in America. If it were, Australian democracy would not be 
so "shocking" to the squatters. Democracy, like Mormonism, 
would be nothing if found among Frenchmen or people with 
black faces, but it is at first sight very terrible, when it smiles 
on you from between a pair of rosy Yorkshire cheeks. 

The political are not greater than the social differences between 
Australia and America. Australian society resembles English 
middle-class society ; the people have, in matters of literature 
and religion, tastes and feelings similar to those which pervade 
such communities as Birmingham or Manchester. On the 
other hand, the vices of America are those of aristocracies ; her 
virtues, those of a landed republic. Shop and factory are still in 
the second rank ; wheat and corn still the prevailing powers. 
In all the Australian colonies, land is coming to the front for 
the second time under a system of small holdings ; but it is 
doubtful whether, looking to the size of Melbourne, the landed 
democracy will ever outvote the town-folk in Victoria. 

That men of ability and character are proscribed has been 
one of the charges brought against colonial democracy. For 



CHAP, v.] COL OXIAL DE2I0 CRA CY. 325 

my part, I found gathered in Melbourne, at the University at 
the Observatory, at the Botanical Garden, and at the Govern- 
ment offices, men of the highest scientific attainments, drawn 
from all parts of the world, and tempted to Australia by large 
salaries voted by the democracy. The statesmen of all the 
colonies are well worthy of the posts they hold. Mr. Macalister 
in Queensland, and Mr. Martin at Sydney, are exellent debaters. 
Mr. Parkes, whose biography would be the typical history of a 
successful colonist, and who has fought his way up from the 
position of a Birmingham artisan free-emigrant to that of Colo- 
nial Secretary of New South Wales, is an able writer. The 
business powers of the present Colonial Treasurer of New 
South Wales are remarkable; and Mr. Higginbotham, the 
Attorney-General of Victoria, possesses a fund of experience 
and a power of foresight which it would be hard to equal at 
home. Many of the ministers in all the colonies are men who 
have worked themselves up from the ranks, and it is amusing 
to notice the affected horror with which their antecedents are 
recalled by those who have brought out a pedigree from the 
old country. A Government clerk in one of the colonies told 
me, that the three last ministers at the head of his department 
had been " so low in the social scale, that my wife could not 
visit theirs." 

Class animosity runs much higher, and drives its roots far 
deeper into private life in Victoria than in any other English- 
speaking country I have seen. Political men of distinction are 
shunned by their opponents in the streets and clubs ; and in- 
stead of its being possible to differ on politics and yet continue 
friends, as in the old country, I have seen men in Victoria 
refuse to sit down to dinner with a statesman from whose views 
on land questions they happened to dissent. A man once 
warned me solemnly against dining with a quiet grave old 
gentleman, on the ground that he was " a most dangerous radi- 
cal — a perfect firebrand." 

Treated in this way, it is not strange that the democratic 
ministers and members stand much upon their dignity, and 
Colonial Parliaments are not only as haughty as the parent 
Assembly at Westminster, but often inclined to assert their 
privileges by the most arbitrary of means ? A few weeks before 



326 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. v. 

I arrived in Melbourne, a member of the staff of the Argus 
newspaper was given up by the proprietors to soothe the infu- 
riated Assembly. Having got him, the great question of what 
to do with him arose, and he was placed in a vault with a grated 
window, originally built for prisoners of the House, but which 
had been temporarily made use of as a coal-hole. Such a dis- 
turbance was provoked by the alleged barbarity of this proceed- 
ing, that the prisoner was taken to a capital room upstairs, 
where he gave dinner-parties every day. His opponents said 
that the great difficulty was to get rid of him, for he seemed to 
be permanently located in the Parliament House, and that, 
when they ordered his liberation, his friends insisted that it 
should not take place until he had been carried down to the 
coal-hole cell which he had occupied the first day, and there 
photographed " through the dungeon bars " as the " martyr of 
the Assembly." 

Though both Victoria and New South Wales are democratic, 
there is a great difference between the two democracies. In 
New South Wales, I found not a democratic so much as a mixed 
country, containing a large and wealthy class with aristocratic 
prejudices, but governed by an intensely democratic majority — 
a country not unlike the State of Maryland. On the other 
hand, the interest which attaches to the political condition of 
Victoria is extreme, since it probably presents an accurate 
view " in little," of the state of society which will exist in England, 
after many steps towards social democracy have been taken, but 
before the nation as a whole has become completely democratic. 

One of the best features of the colonial democracy is its 
earnestness in the cause of education. In England it is one of 
our worst national peculiarities that, whatever our station, we 
either are content with giving children an " education " which 
is absolutely wanting in any real training for the mind, or aid 
to the brain in its development, or else we give them a school- 
ing which is a mere preparation for the Bar or Church, for it 
has always been considered with us that it is a far greater matter 
to be a solicitor or a curate than to be wise or happy. This is, of 
course, a consequence partly of the energy of the race, and partly 
of our aristocratic form of society, which leads every member 
of a class to be continually trying to get into the class immedi- 



CHAP, v.] COL ONIAL DEMO CEACY. 327 

ately above it in wealth or standing. In the colonies, as in the 
United States, the democratic form which society has taken, has 
carried with it the continental habit of thought upon educational 
matters, so that it would seem as though the form of society 
influenced this question much more than the energy of the 
race, which is rather heightened than depressed in these new 
countries. The English Englishman says, " If I send Dick to 
a good school and scrape up money enough to put him into a 
profession, even if he don't make much, at least he'll be a 
gentleman." The Australian or democratic Englishman says, 
'* Tom must have good schooling, and must make the most of 
it ; but I'll not have him knocking about in broad-cloth and 
earning nothing ; so no profession for him ; but let him make 
money like me, and mayhap get a few acres more land." 

Making allowance for the thinness of population in the bush, 
education in Victoria is extremely general among the children, 
and is directed by local committees with success, although the 
members of the boards are often themselves destitute of all 
knowledge except that which tells them that education will do 
their children good. Mr. Geary, an inspector of schools, told 
the Commissioners that he had examined one school where not 
a single member of the local committee could write ; but these 
immigrant fathers do their duty honestly towards the children 
for all their ignorance, and there is every chance that the 
schools will grow and grow until their influence on behalf of 
freedom becomes as marked in Victoria as it ever has been in 
Massachusetts. Education has a great advantage in countries 
where political rights are widely extended : in the colonies, as 
in America, there is a spirit of political life astir throughout the 
country, and newspapers and public meetings continue an 
education throughout life which in England ceases at twelve, 
and gives place to driving sheep to paddocks, and shouting at 
rooks in a wheatfield. 

There is nothing in the state of Victorian schools to show 
what will be the type of the next generation, but there are 
many reasons for believing that the present disorganization of 
colonial society will only cease with the attainment of complete 
democracy or absolute equality of conditions, which must be 
produced by the already democratic institutions in little more 



328 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. v. 

than a generation. The squatter class will disappear as agricul- 
ture drives sheep-farming from the field, and, on the other 
hand, the town democracy will adopt a tone of manly indepen- 
dence instead of one of brag and bluster, when education 
makes them that which at present they are not — the equals of 
the wealthy farmers. 

It has been justly pointed out that one of the worst dangers 
of democracy is the crushing influence of public opinion upon 
individuality, and many who have written upon America have 
assumed that the tendency has already shown itself there. I 
had during my stay in the United States arrived at the contrary 
opinion, and come to believe that in no country in the world 
is eccentricity, moral and religious, so ripe as in America, in no 
country individuality more strong ; but ascribing to intermix- 
ture of foreign blood this apparently abnormal departure from 
the assumed democratic shape of society, I looked forward to 
the prospect of seeing the overwhelming force of the opinion of 
the majority exhibited in all its hideousness in the democratic 
colonies. I was as far from discovering the monster as I had 
been in America, for I soon found that, although there may be 
little intellectual unrest in Australia, there is marvellous variety 
of manners. 

There is in our colonies no trace of that multiplication of 
creeds which characterises America, and which is said to be 
everywhere the result of the aboHtion of Establishments. In 
Victoria, eighty per cent, of the whites belong to either Epis- 
copalians, Catholics, or Presbyterians, and almost all of the 
remainder to the well-known English Churches; nothing is 
heard of such sects as the hundreds that have sprung up in 
New England — Hopkinsians, Universalists, Osgoodites, Roger- 
enes, Come-Outers, Non-Resistants, and the like. The Austra- 
lian democrat likes to pray as his father prayed before him, and 
is strongly conservative in his ecclesiastic affairs. It may be 
the absence in Australia of enthusiastic religion which accounts 
for the want among the country folk of the peculiar gentleness 
of manner which distinguishes the farmer in America. Climate 
may have its effect upon the voice ; the influence of the 
Puritan and Quaker in the early history of the thirteen States, 
when manners were moulded and the national life shaped for 



CHAP, v.] COLONIAL DEMOCRACY. ' 329 

good or harm, may have permanently affected the descendants 
of the early settlers ; but everywhere in America I noticed that 
the most perfect dignity and repose of manner was found in 
districts where the passionate religious systems had their 
strongest hold. 

There is no trace in the colonies at present of that love for 
general ideas which takes America away from England in 
philosophy, and sets her with the Latin and Celtic races on the 
side of France. The tendency is said to follow on democracy, 
but it would be better said that democracy is itself one of these 
general ideas. Democracy in the colonies is at present an 
accident, and nothing more ; it rests upon no basis of reasoning, 
but upon a fact. The first settlers were active, bustling men of 
fairly even rank or wealth, none of whom could brook the 
leadership of any other. The only way out of the difficulty was 
the adoption of the rule, "All of us to be equal, and the majority 
to govern ;" but there is no conception of the nature of demo- 
cracy, as the unfortunate Chinese have long since discovered. 
The colonial democrats understand " democracy " as little as 
the party w^hich takes the name in the United States ; but there 
is at present no such party in the colonies as the great repub- 
lican party of America. 

Democracy cannot always remain an accident in Australia : 
where once planted, it never fails to fix its roots ; but even in 
America its growth has been extremely slow. There is at 
present in Victoria and New South Wales a general admission 
among the men of the existence of equality of conditions, to- 
gether with a perpetual rebellion on the part of their wives to 
defeat democracy, and to re-introduce the old "colonial court " 
society, and resulting class divisions. The consequence of this 
distinction is that the women are mostly engaged in elbowing 
their way ; ^ while among their husbands there is no such thing 
as the pretending to a style, a culture, or a wealth which the 
pretender does not possess, for the reason that no male colonist 
admits the possibility of the existence of a social superior. 
Like the American " democrat," the Australian will admit that 
there may be any number of grades below him, so long as you 
allow that he is at the top ; but no republican can be stauncher 
in the matter of his own equality with the best. 



330 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. y. 

There is no sign that in Austraha any more than in America 
there will spring up a centre of opposition to the dominant 
majority; but there is as little evidence that the majority will 
even unwittingly abuse its power. It is the fashion to say that 
for a State to be intellectually great and noble, there must be 
within it a nucleus of opposition to the dominant principles of 
the time and place, and that the best and noblest minds, the 
intellects the most seminal, have invariably belonged to men 
who formed part of such a group. It may be doubted whether 
this assumed necessity for opposition to the public will is not 
characteristic of a terribly imperfect state of society and govern- 
ment. It is chiefly because the world has never had experience 
of a national life at once throbbing with the pulse of the whole 
people, and completely tolerant not only in law but in opinion 
of sentiments the most divergent from the views of the majority 
— -firm in the pursuit of truths already grasped, but ready to 
seize with avidity upon new ; gifted with a love of order, yet 
prepared to fit itself to shifting circumstances — that men con- 
tinue to look with complacency upon the enormous waste of 
intellectual power that occurs when a germ of truth such as that 
contained in the doctrines of the Puritans finds development 
and acceptance only after centuries have passed. 

Australia will start unclogged by slavery to try this experi- 
ment for the world. 



331 



CHAPTER VI. 

Protection. 

The greatest of all democratic stumbling-blocks is said to be 
Protection. 

, " Encourage native industry !" the colonial shopkeepers 
write up ; " Show your patriotism, and buy colonial goods !" is 
painted in huge letters on a shop-front at Castlemaine. In 
England, some unscrupulous traders, we are told, wTite " From 
Paris" over their English goods, but such dishonesty in Victoria 
takes another shape; there we have " Warranted colonial made" 
placed over imported wares, for many will pay a higher price 
for a colonial product confessedly not more than equal to the 
foreign, such is the rage for Native Industry, and the hatred 
of the "Antipodean doctrine of Free Trade." 

Many former colonists who live at home persuade themselves, 
and unfortunately persuade also the public in England, that the 
Protectionists are weak in the colonies. So far is this from 
being the case in either Victoria or New South Wales, that in 
the former colony I found that in the Lower House the Free 
Traders formed but three-elevenths of the Assembly, and in 
New South Wales the pastoral tenants of the Crown may be 
said to stand alone in their support of Free Trade. Some of 
the squatters go so far as to declare that none of the public 
men of the colonies really believe in the advantages of Protec- 
tion, but that they dishonestly accept the principle, and under- 
take to act upon it when in office, in order to secure the votes 
of an ignorant majority of labourers, who are themselves con- 
vinced that Protection means high wages. 

It would seem as though we Free Traders had become 
nearly as bigoted in favour of Free Trade as our former 
opponents were in favour of Protection. Just as they used to 



332 GREATER BRITAIN. [cfiap, vi. 

say " We are right ; why argue the question ?" so now, in face 
of the support of Protection by all the greatest minds in 
America, all the first statesmen of the Australias, we tell the 
New England and the Australian politicians that we will not 
discuss Protection with them, because there can be no two 
views about it among men of intelligence and education. We 
will hear no defence of " national lunacy," we say. 

If, putting aside our prejudices, we consent to argue with an 
Australian or American Protectionist, we find ourselves in 
difficulties. All the ordinary arguments against the compelling 
people by Act of Parliament to consume a dearer or inferior 
article are admitted as soon as they are urged. If you attempt 
to prove that Protection is bolstered up by those whose private 
interests it subserves, you are shown the shrewd Australian 
diggers and the calculating Western farmers in America — men 
whose pocket interest is wholly opposed to Protection, and who 
yet, almost to a man, support it. A digger at Ballarat defended 
Protection to me in this way : he said he knew that under a 
protective tariff he had to pay dearer than would otherwise be 
the case for his jacket and his moleskin trousers ; but that he 
preferred to do this, as by so doing he aided in building up in 
the colony such trades as the making-up of clothes, in which 
his brother and other men physically too weak to be diggers 
could gain an honest living. In short, the self-denying Protec- 
tion of the Australian diggers is of the character of that which 
would be accorded to the glaziers of a town by the citizens, if 
they broke their windows to find their fellow-townsmen work : 
"We know we lose, but men must live," they say. At the same 
time they deny that the loss will be enduring. The digger tells 
you that he should not mind a continuing pocket loss, but that, 
as a matter of fact, that which in an old country would be 
pocket loss, in a new country such as his only comes to this — 
that it forms a check on immigration. Wages being 5^-. a day 
in Victoria and 35". a day in England, workmen would naturally 
flock into Victoria from England until wages in Melbourne fell 
to 35". 6d. or 4J". Here comes in prohibition, and by increasing 
the cost of living in Victoria, and cutting into the Australian 
handicraftsman's margin of luxuries, diminishes the temptation 
to immigration, and consequently the influx itself. 



CHAP. VI.] PROTECTION. 333 

The Western farmers in America defend Protection upon 
far wider grounds : they admit that Free Trade would conduce 
to the most rapid possible peopling of their country with foreign 
immigrants; but this, they say, is an eminently undesirable 
conclusion. They prefer to pay a heavy tax in the increased 
price of everything they consume, and in the greater cost of 
labour, rather than see their country denationahzed by a rush 
of Irish or Germans, or their political institutions endangered 
by a still further increase in the size and power of New York. 
One old fellow said to me : "I don't want the Americans in 
1900 to be 200 milhons, but I want them to be happy." 

The American Protectionists point to the danger that their 
countrymen would run unless town kept pace with country 
population. Settlers would pour off to the west, and drain the 
juices of the fertile land by cropping it year after year, without 
fallow, without manure, and then, as the land became in a few 
years exhausted, would have nowhere whither to turn to find 
the fertilizers which the soil would need. Were they to depend 
upon agriculture alone, they would sweep in a wave across the 
land, leaving behind them a worn out, depopulated, jungle- 
covered soil, open to future settlement, when its lands should 
have recovered their fertility by some more provident race. 
The coastlands of most ancient countries are exhausted, densely 
bushed, and uninhabited. In this fact lies the power of our 
sailor race : crossing the seas, we occupy the coasts, and step 
by step work our way into the upper country, where we should 
not have attempted to show ourselves had the ancient popula- 
tion resisted us upon the shores. In India, in Ceylon, we met 
the hardy race of the highlands and interior only after we had 
already fixed ourselves upon the coast, with a safe basis for our 
supply. The fate that these countries have met is that which 
colonists expect to be their own, unless the protective system 
be carried out in its entirety. In like manner the Americans 
point to the ruin of Virginia, and if you urge "Slavery," 
answer, "Slavery is but agriculture." 

Those who speak of the selfishness of the Protectionists as 
a whole can never have taken the trouble to examine into the 
arguments by which Protection is supported in Australia and 
America. In these countries, Protection is no mere national 



334 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vi. 

delusion ; it is a system deliberately adopted with open eyes as 
one conducive to the country's welfare, in spite of objections 
known to all — in spite of pocket losses that come home to all. 
If it be, as we in England believe, a folly, it is at all events a 
sublime one, full of self-sacrifice, illustrative of a certain nobility 
in the national heart. The Australian diggers and Western 
farmers in America are setting a grand example to the world of 
self-sacrifice for a national object ; hundreds and thousands of 
rough men are content to live — they and their famihes — upon 
less than they might otherwise enjoy, in order that the condition 
of the mass of their countrymen may continue raised above 
that of their brother toilers in Old England. Their manufac- 
tures are beginning now to stand alone, but hitherto, without 
Protection, the Americans would have had no cities but sea- 
ports. By picturing to ourselves England dependent upon the 
city of London, upon Liverpool, and Hull, and Bristol, we shall 
see the necessity the Western men are now under of setting off 
Pittsburg against New York and Philadelphia. In short, the 
tendency, according to the Western farmers, of Free Trade, in 
the early stages of a country's existence, is to promote universal 
centralization, to destroy local centres and the commerce they 
create, to so tax the farmer with the cost of transport to distant 
markets, that he must grow wheat and corn continuously, and 
cannot but exhaust his soil. With markets so distant, the 
richest forest lands are not worth clearing, and settlement 
sweeps over the country, occupying the poorer lands, and then 
abandoning them once more. 

Protection in the colonies and America is to a great degree a 
revolt against steam. Steam is making the world all one ; 
steam " corrects " differences in the price of labour. When 
steam brings all races into competition with each other, the 
cheaper races will extinguish the dearer, till at last some one 
people will inhabit the whole earth. Coal remains the only 
power, as it will probably always be cheaper to carry the manu- 
factured goods than to carry the coal. 

Time after time I have heard the Western farmers draw imagi- 
nary pictures of the state of America if Free Trade should gain 
the day, and ask of what avail it is to say that Free Trade and 
free circulation of people are profitable to the pocket, if they 



CHAP. VI.] PROTECTION. 335 

destroy the national existence of America ; what good to point 
out the gain of weight to their purses, in the face of the destruc- 
tion of their reUgion, their language, and their Saxon institutions. 

One of the greatest of the thinkers of America defended 
Protection to me on the following grounds : That without Pro- 
tection, America could at present have but few and limited 
manufactures. That a nation cannot properly be said to exist 
as such, unless she has m_anufactures of many kinds ; for men 
are born, some with a turn to agriculture, some with a turn to 
mechanics ; and if you force the mechanic-by-nature to become 
a farmer, he will make a bad farmer, and the nation will lose 
the advantage of all his power and invention. That the whole 
of the possible employments of the human race are in a 
measure necessary employments — necessary to the making up 
of a nation. That every concession to Free Trade cuts out of 
all chance of action some of the faculties of the American 
national mind, and, in so doing, weakens and debases it. That 
each and every class of workers is of such importance to the 
country, that we must make any sacrifice necessary to maintain 
them in full work. " The national mind is manifold," he said ; 
" and if you do not keep up every branch of employment in 
every district, you waste the national force. If we were to 
remain a purely agricultural people, land would fall into fewer 
and fewer hands, and our people become more and more 
brutalised as the years rolled on." 

It must not be supposed that Protection is entirely defended 
upon these strange new grounds. "Save us from the pauper- 
labour of Europe," is the most recent as well as the oldest of 
Protectionist cries. The Australians and Americans say, that 
by working women at is. a day in the mines in Wales, and by 
generally degrading all labourers under the rank of highly- 
skilled artisans, the British keep wages so low, that, in spite of 
the cost of carriage, they can almost invariably undersell the 
colonists and Americans in American and Australian markets. 
This state of degradation and poverty nothing can force them 
to introduce into their own countries, and, on the other hand, 
they consider manufactures necessary for the national purpose 
alluded to before. The alternative is Protection. 

The most unavoidable of all the difficulties of Protection — 



336 • GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vi. 

namely, that no human government can ever be trusted to 
adjust protective taxation without corruption — is no objection 
to the Prohibition which the Western Protectionists demand. 
The New Englanders say — " Let us meet the Enghsh on fair 
terms j" the Western men say that they will not meet them at 
all. Some of the New York Protectionists declare that their 
object is merely the fostering of American manufactures until 
they are able to stand alone, the United States not having at 
present reached the point which had been attained by other 
nations when they threw Protection to the winds. Such halting 
Protectionists as these find no sympathy in Australia or the 
West, although the highest of all Protectionists look forward 
to the distant time when, local centres being everywhere esta- 
blished, customs will be abolished on all sides, and mankind 
form one family. 

The chief thing to be borne in mind in discussing Protection 
with an Australian or an American, is that he never thinks of 
denying that under Protection he pays a higher price for his 
goods than he would if he bought them from us, and that he 
admits at once that he temporarily pays a tax of 15 or 20 per 
cent, upon everything he buys, in order to help set his country 
on the road to national unity and ultimate wealth. Without 
Protection, the American tells you, there will be commercial 
New York, sugar-growing Louisiana, the corn-growing North- 
West, but no America. Protection alone can give him a united 
country. When we talk about things being to the advantage or 
disadvantage of a country, the American Protectionist asks 
what you mean. Admitting that all you say against Protection 
may be true, he says that he had sooner see America sup- 
porting a hundred millions independent of the remainder of 
the world than two hundred mihions dependent for clothes upon 
the British. " You, on the other hand," he says, "would prefer 
our custom. How can we discuss the question ? The dif- 
ference between us is radical, and we have no base on which to 
build." 

It is a common doctrine in the colonies of England that a 
nation cannot be called " independent " if it has to cry out to 
another for supplies of necessaries ; that true national existence 
is first attained when the country becomes capable of supplying 



CHAP. VI.] PROTECTION. 337 

to its own citizens those goods without which they cannot exist 
in the state of comfort which they have already reached. Poli- 
tical is apt to follow upon commercial dependency, they say. 

The question of Protection is bound up with the wider one 
of whether we are to love our fellow-subjects, our race, or the 
world at large ; whether we are to pursue our country's good at 
the expense of other nations ? There is a growing belief in 
England, that the noblest philosophy is to deny the existence 
of the moral right to benefit ourselves by harming others j that 
love of mankind must in time replace love of race as that has 
in part replaced narrow patriotism and love of self It would 
seem that our Free Trade system lends itself better to these 
wide modern sympathies than does Protection. On the other 
hand, it may be argued that, if every State consults the good of 
its own citizens, we shall, by the action of all nations, obtain 
the desired happiness of the whole world, and this with rapidity, 
from the reason that every country understands its own interests 
better than it does those of its neighbour. As a rule, the 
colonists hold that they should not protect themselves against 
the sister-colonies, but only against the outer world ; and while 
I was in Melbourne, an arrangement was made with respect to 
the border customs between Victoria and New South Wales ; 
but this is at present the only step that has been taken towards 
inter-colonial Free Trade. 

It is passing strange that Victoria should be noted for the 
eagerness with which her people seek protection. Possessed of 
little coal, they appear to be attempting artificially to create an 
industry which, owing to this sad lack of fuel, must languish 
from the moment that it is let alone. Sydney coal sells in 
Melbourne at thirty shillings a ton ; at the pit's mouth at New- 
castle, New South Wales, it fetches only seven or eight shillings. 
With regard, however, to the making-up of native produce, the 
question in the case of Victoria is merely this : Is it cheaper to 
carry the wool to the coal, and then the woollen goods back 
again, than to carry the coal to the wool ? and as long as 
Victoria can continue to export wheat, so that the coal-ships 
may not want freight, wool manufactures may prosper in 
Victoria. 

The Victorians naturally deny that the cost of coal has much 

z 



338 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vi. 

to do with the question. The French manufacturers, they point 
out, with dearer coal, but with cheaper labour, have in many- 
branches of trade beaten the English out of common markets, 
but then under Protection there is no chance of cheap labour 
in Victoria. 

Writing for the Englishmen of Old England, it is not necessary 
for me to defend Free Trade by any arguments. As far as we 
in our island are concerned, it is so manifestly to the pocket 
interest of almost all of us, and at the same time, on account of 
the minuteness of our territory, so little dangerous politically, 
that for Britaiji there can be no fear of a deliberate relapse into 
Protection ; although we have but little right to talk about Free 
Trade so long as we continue our enormous subsidies to the 
.Cunard liners. 

The American argument in favour of Prohibition is in the 
main, it will be seen, political; the economical objections being 
admitted, but outweighed. Our action in the matter of our 
postal contracts, and in the case of the Factory Acts, at all 
events shows that we are not ourselves invariably averse to 
distinguish between the political and the economical aspect of 
certain questions. 

My duty has been to chronicle what is said and thought upon 
the matter in our various plantations. One thing at least is 
clear — that even if the opinions I have recorded be as ridiculous 
when applied to Australia or America as they would be when 
applied to England, they are not supported by a selfish clique, 
but rest upon the generosity and self-sacrifice of a majority of 
the population. 



339 



CHAPTER VII. 

Labour. 

Side by side with the unselfish Protectionism of the diggers, 
there flourishes among the artisans of the Australias a self- 
interested desire for non-intercourse with the outside world. 

In America, the working men, themselves almost without 
exception immigrants, though powerful in the various States 
from holding the balance of parties, have never as yet been 
able to make their voices heard in the Federal Congress. In 
the chief Australian colonies, on the other hand, the artisans 
have more than any other class, the possession of political 
power. Throughout the world the grievance of the working 
classes lies in the fact that, while trade and profits have increased 
enormously within the last few years, true as distinguished 
from nominal wages have not risen. It is even doubtful whether 
the American or British handicraftsman can now live in such 
comfort as he could make sure of a few years back : it is certain 
that agricultural labourers in the south of England are worse oft' 
than they were ten years ago, although the depreciation of gold 
prevents us from accurately gauging their true position. In 
Victoria and New South Wales, and in the States of Wisconsin, 
Illinois, and Missouri, where the artisans possess some share of 
power, they have set about the attempt to remedy by law the 
grievance under which they suffer. In the American States, 
where the suppression of immigration seems almost impossible, 
their interference takes the shape of eight-hour bills, and exclu- 
sion of coloured labourers. There is no trades-union in America 
which will admit to membership a Chinaman, or even a mulatto. 
In Victoria and New South Wales, however, it is not difficult 
quietly to put a check upon the importation of foreign labour 

z 2 



340 GREATER BRITAIN. ■ [chap. vii. 

The vast distance from Europe makes the unaided immigration 
of artisans extremely rare ; and sincet he democrats have been 
in power the funds for assisted immigration have been withheld, 
and the Chinese influx all but forbidden, while manifestoes 
against the ordinary European immigration have repeatedly 
been published at Sydney by the Council of the Associated 
Trades. 

The Sydney operatives have always taken a leading part in 
opposition to immigration, from the time when they founded 
the Anti-Transportation Committee up to the present day. 
In 1847, a natural and proper wish to prevent the artificial de- 
pression of wages was at the bottom of the anti-transportation 
movement, although the arguments made use of in the petition 
to the Queen were of the most general character ; and Sydney 
mechanics, many of them free immigrants themselves, say that 
there is no difference of principle between the introduction of 
free or assisted immigrants and that of convicts. 

If we look merely to the temporary results of the policy of 
the Australian artisans, we shall find it hard to deny that their 
acts are calculated momentarily to increase their material pros- 
perity; so far they may be selfish, but they are not blind. Ad- 
mitting that wages depend on the ratio of capital to population, 
the Austrahans assert that, with them, population increases faster 
than capital, and that hindering immigration will restore the 
balance. Prudential checks on population are useless, they say, 
in face of Irish immigration. At the same time, it is clear that, 
from the discouragement of immigration and limitation to eight 
hours of the daily toil, there results an exceptional scarcity of 
labour, which cramps the development of the country, and causes 
a depression in trade which must soon diminish the wage-fund, 
and re-act upon the working men. It is unfortunately the fact, 
that colonial artisans do not sufficiently bear in mind the dis- 
tinction between real and nominal wages, but are easily caught 
by the show of an extra few shillings a week, even though the 
purchasing power of each shilling be diminished by the change. 
When looked into, "higher wages" often mean that the labourer, 
instead of starving upon ten shillings a week, is to starve upon 
twenty. 

As regards the future, contrasted with the temporary condition 



CHAP. VII.] LABOUR. 341 

of the Australian labourer, there is no disguising the fact that 
mere exclusion of immigration will not in the long run avail 
him. It might, of course, be urged that immigration is, even in 
America, a small matter by the side of the natural increase of 
the people, and that to shut out the immigrant is but one of 
many checks to population ; but in Australia the natural increase 
is not so great as in a young country might be expected. The 
men so largely outnumber the women in Australia, that even 
early marriages and large families cannot make the birth-rate 
very high, and fertile land being at present still to be obtained 
at first hand, the new agricultural districts swallow up the natural 
increase of the population. Still, important as is immigration 
at this moment, ultimately through the influx of women — to 
which the democrats are not opposed — or, more slowly, by the 
effort of nature to restore the balance of the sexes, the rate of 
natural increase will become far greater in Australia. U Itimately, 
there can be no doubt, if ihe Australian labourer continues to 
retain his present standard of comfort, prudential checks upon 
the birth of children will be requisite to maintain the present 
ratio of capital to population. 

Owing to the comparatively high prices fixed for agricultural 
land in the three south-eastern colonies of Australia, the abun- 
dance of unoccupied tracts has not hitherto had that influence 
on wages in Australia which it appears to have exercised in 
America; but under the democratic amendments of the existing 
free selection system, wages will probably again rise in the 
colonies, to be once more reduced by immigration, or, if the 
democracy gains the day, more slowly lowered by the natural 
increase of the population. 

In places where competition has reduced the reward of labour 
to the lowest amount consistent with the efiiciency of the work, 
compulsory restriction of the hours of toil must evidently be 
an unmixed benefit to the labourer, until carried to the point at 
which it destroys the trade in which he is engaged. In America 
and Australia, however, where the labourer has a margin of 
luxuries which can be cut down, and where the manufacturers 
are still to some extent competing with European rivals, restric- 
tion of hours puts them at a disadvantage with the capitalists of 
the old world, and, reducing their profits, tends also to diminish 



342 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, vii 

the wage-fund, and ultimately to decrease the wages of their 
men. The colonial action in this matter may, nevertheless, like 
all infringements of general economic laws, be justified by proof 
of the existence of a higher necessity for breaking than for ad- 
hering to the rule of freedom. Our own Factory Acts, we 
should remember, were undoubtedly calculated to diminish the 
production of the country. 

Were the American and Australian handicraftsmen to become 
sufficiently powerful to combine strict Protection, or prohibition 
of foreign intercourse, with reduction of hours of toil, they 
would ultimately drive capital out of their countries, and either 
lower wages, or else diminish the population by checking both 
immigration and natural increase. Here, as in the consideration 
of Protection, we come to that bar to all discussion, the question, 
" What is a nation's good ?" It is at least doubtful whether in 
England we do not attach too great importance to the con- 
tinuance of nations in " the progressive state." Unrestricted 
immigration may destroy the literature, the traditions, the 
nationality itself of the invaded country, and it is a question 
whether these ideas are not worth preserving even at a cost of 
a few figures in the returns of imports, exports, and population. 
A country in which Free Trade principles have been carried to" 
their utmost logical development must be cosmopolitan and 
nationless, and for such a state of things to exist universally 
without danger to civilisation the world is not yet prepared. 

" Know-nothingism " in America, as what is now styled 
" native Americanism " was once called — a form of the protest 
against the exaggeration of Free Trade — was founded by han- 
dicraftsmen, and will in all probability find its main support 
within their ranks whenever the time for its inevitable resusci- 
tation shall arrive. That there is honest pride of race at the 
bottom of the agitation no one can doubt who knows the history 
of the earlier Know-nothing movement ; but class interest 
happens to point the same way as does the instinct of the race. 
The refusal of political privileges to immigrants will have some 
tendency to check the flow of immigration ; at all events, it 
will check the self-assertion of the immigrants. That which 
does this leaves, too, the control of wages more within the 
hands of actual labourers, and prevents the European labourers 



CHAP. VII.] LABOUR. 343 

of the eleventh hour coming in to share the heightened wages 
for which tlie American hands have struck and suffered misery 
and want. No consistent repubhcan can object to the making 
ten or twenty years' residence in the United States the condition 
for citizenship of the land. 

In the particular case of the Australian colonies, they are 
happily separated from Ireland by seas so wide as to have a 
chance of preserving a distinct nationality, such as America 
can scarcely hope for: only 1500 persons have come to New 
South Wales, unassisted, in the last five years. The burthen of 
proof lies upon those who propose to destroy the rising nation- 
ality by assisting in the importation of a mixed multitude of 
negroes. Chinamen, Hill-coolies, Irish, and Germans, in order 
that the imports and exports of Victoria and New South Wales 
may be increased, and that there may be a larger number of 
so-called Victorians and New South Welsh to live in misery. 

Owing to the fostering of immigration by the aristocratic 
government, the population of Queensland had, in 1866, quad- 
rupled itself since i860 ; but, even were the other colonies 
inclined to follow the example of their northern sister, they 
could not do so with success. New South Wales and Tasmania 
might import colonists by the thousand, but they would be no 
sooner landed than they would run to Queensland, or sail to 
the New Zealand diggings, just as the " Canadian immigrants " 
flock into the United States. 

That phase of the labour question to which I have last 
alluded seems to shape itself into the question, " Shall the 
labourer ahvays and every^vhere be encouraged or permitted to 
carry his labour to the best market ?" The Australians answer 
that they are willing to admit that additional hands in a new 
country mean additional wealth, but that there is but little 
good in our preaching moral restraint to them if European 
immigration is to be encouraged, Chinese allowed. The only 
effect, they say, that self-control can have is that of giving such 
children as they rear Chinamen or Irishmen to struggle against 
instead of brothers. It is hopeless to expect that the Australian 
workmen will retain their present standard of comfort if an 
influx of dark-skinned handicraftsmen is permitted. 

Some ten or even fewer years ago, we free-traders of the 



344 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vii. 

Western world, first then coming to know some little about the 
kingdoms of the further East, paused a moment in our daily 
toil to lift to the skies our hands in lamentation at the blind 
exclusiveness which'we were told had for ages past held sway 
within the council-chambers of Pekin. No words were too 
strong for our new-found laughing-stock ; China became for us 
what we are to Parisian journalists — a Boeotia redeemed only 
by a certain eccentricity of folly. This vast hive swarming 
with two hundred million working bees was said to find its interest 
in shutting out the world, punishing with death the outgoing 
and incoming of the people. " China for the Chinese," was 
the common war-cry of the rulers and the ruled ; " Self- 
contained has China been, and prospered ; self-contained she 
shall continue," the favourite maxim of their teachers. Nothing 
could be conceived nobler than the scorn which mingled with 
half-doubting incredulity and with Pharisaic thanking of heaven 
that we were not as they, when the blindness of these outer 
barbarians of " Gog and Magog land " was drawn for us by 
skilful pens, and served out with all the comments that self- 
complacency ^ could suggest. A conversion in the future was 
foretold, however ; this Cliinese infirmity of vision was not to 
last for ever; the day would come when Studentships in 
Political Economy would be founded in Pekin, and Ricardo 
take the place of Cou-fou-chow in Thibetian schools. A con- 
version has taken place of late, but not that hoped for ; or, if 
it be a conversion consistent with the truths of Economic 
Science, it has taken a strange shape. The wise men of 
Canton may be tempted, perhaps, to think that it is we who 
have learnt the wisdom of the sages, and been brought back 
into the fold of the great master. Chinese immigration is 
heavily taxed in California ; taxed to the point of prohibition 
in Victoria ; and forbidden under heavy penalties in Louisiana 
and other ex-rebel States. 

The Chinaman is pushing himself to the fore wherever his 
presence is allowed. We find Chinese helmsmen and quarter- 
masters in the service of the Messageries and Oriental com- 
panies receiving twice the wages paid to Indian lascars. We 
hear of the importation of Chinese labourers into India for 
railway and for drainage works, The Chinaman has great vitality. 



Chap, vn.] LABOUR. 345 

Of the cheap races the Mongol is the most pushing, the 
likehest to conquer in the fight, It would almost seem as 
though we were wrong in our common scales of preference; 
far from right in our use of the terms " superior " and " inferior " 
races. 

A well-taught white man can ou treason or can overreach a 
well-taught Chinaman or negro. But under some chmatic 
conditions, the negro can outwork the white man ; under 
almost all conditions, the Chinaman can outwork him. Where 
this is the case, is it not the Chinaman or the negro that should 
be called the better man ? Call him what we may, will he not 
prove his superiority by working the Englishman off the soil ? 
In Florida and Mississippi, the black is certainly the better 
man. 

Many Victorians, even those who respect and admire the 
Chinese, are in favour of the imposition of a tax upon the 
yellow immigrants, in order to prevent the destruction of the 
rising Australian nationality. They fear that otherwise they 
will live to see the English element swamped in the Asiatic 
throughout Australia. It is not certain that we may not some 
day have to encounter a similar danger in Old England. 

It will be seen from the account thus given of the state of the 
labour question in Australia, that the colonial handicraftsmen 
stand towards those of the world in much the same relative 
position as that held by the members of a trade-union towards 
the other workmen of the same trade. The limitation of 
immigration has the same effect as the limitation of 
apprentices in a single trade in England. It is easy to say that 
the difference between fellow-countryman and foreigner is 
important ; that while it is an unfairness to all English workmen 
that English hatters should limit apprentices, it is not 
unfair to English hatters that Australian hatters should limit 
their apprentices. For my own part, I am inclined to think 
that, fair or unfair — and we have no international moral rule to 
decide the question — we might at least say to Australia that, 
while she throws upon us the chief expenses of her defence, she 
is hardly in a position to refuse to aid our emigrants. 

Day by day, the labour question in its older aspects becomes 
of less and less importance. The relationship of master and 



346 GREATER BRITAIN. ' [chap. vii. 

servant is rapidly dying the death ; co-operative farming and 
industrial partnerships must supersede it everywhere at no 
distant date. In these systems we shall find the remedy 
against the decline of trade with which the English-speaking 
countries of the earth are threatened. 

The existing system of labour is anti-democratic ; it is at once 
productive of and founded on the existence of an aristocracy of 
capital and a servitude of workmen ; and our English demo- 
cracies cannot afford that half their citizens should be dependent 
labourers. If manufactures are to be consistent with demo- 
cracy, they must be carried on in shops in which each man shall 
be at once capitalist and handicraftsman. Such institutions are 
already in existence in Massachusetts, in Illinois, in Pennsyl- 
vania, and in Sydney ; while at Troy, in New York State, there 
is a great iron-foundry, owned from roof to floor by the men 
who work in it. It is not enough that the workman should 
share in the profits. The change which, continuing through the 
Middle Ages into the present century, has at last everywhere 
converted the relation of lord and slave into that of master 
and hireling, is already giving place to the silent revolution 
which is steadily substituting for this relationship of capital and 
labour that of a perfect marriage, in which the labourer and 
the capitalist shall be one. 

Under this system there can be no strikes, no petty trickery, 
no jealousy, no waste of time. Each man's individual interest 
is coincident with that of all. Where the labour is that of a 
brotherhood, the toil becomes ennobled. Were industrial 
partnerships a new device, their inventor would need no monu- 
ment ; his would be found in the future history of the race. As 
it is, this latest advance of Western civilization is but a return 
to the earliest and noblest form of labour ; the Arabs, the Don 
Cossacks, the Maori tribes, are all co-operative farmers j it is 
the mission of the English race to apply the ancient principle 
to manufactures. 



347 



CHAPTER VIIL 

Woman. 

In one respect, Victoria stands at once sadly behind and strangely 
in advance of other democratic countries. Women, or at least 
some women, vote at the Lower House elections, but, on the 
other hand, the legal position of the sex is almost as inferior to 
that of man as it is in England or the East. 

At an election held some few years ago, female ratepayers 
voted everywhere throughout Victoria. Upon examination, it 
was found that a new Registration Act had directed the rate- 
books to be used as a basis for the preparation of the electoral 
lists, and that women householders had been legally put on the 
register, although the intention of the Legislature was not 
expressed, and the question of female voting had not been 
raised during the debates. Another instance, this, of the 
singular way in which in truly British countries reforms are 
brought about by accident, and, when once become facts, are 
allowed to stand. There is no more sign of general adhesion 
in Australia than in England to the doctrine which asserts that 
women, as well as men, being interested in good government, 
should have a voice in the selection of that government to 
which they are forced to submit. 

As far as concerns their social position, women are as badly 
off in Australia as in England, Our theory of marriage — which 
has been tersely explained thus : " the husband and wife are 
one, and the husband is that o?ie'^ — rules as absolutely at the 
antipodes as it does in Yorkshire. I was daily forced to 
remember the men of Kansas and Missouri, and the widely 
different view they take of these matters to that of the 
Australians. As they used to tell me, they are impatient of 
seeing their women ranked with " lunatics and idiots " in the 
catalogue of incapacities. They are unable to see that women 
are much better represented by their male friends than were the 



348 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. viii. 

Southern blacks by their owners or overseers. They beHeve 
that the process of election would not be more purified by 
female emancipation than would the character of the Parliaments 
elected. 

The Kansas people argue that if you were told that there existed 
in some ideal country two great sections of a race, the members 
of the one often gross, often vicious, often giving to loud talking, 
to swearing, to drinking, spitting, chewing ; not infrequently 
corrupt ; those of the other branch, mild, kind, quiet, pure, 
devout, with none of the habitual vices of the first-named sect 
— if you were told that one of these branches was alone to elect 
rulers. and to govern, you would at once say, "Tell us where 
this happy country is that basks in the rule of such a god-like 
people ?" " Stop a minute," says your informant, " it is the 
creatures I described first — the 7?ie?i who rule ; the others are 
only women, poor silly fools — imperfect men, I assure you ; 
nothing more." 

It is somewhat the fashion to say that the so-called " extra- 
vagances " of the Kansas folk and other American Western 
men arise from the extraordinary position given to their women 
by the disproportion of their sexes. Now, in all the Australian 
colonies the men vastly outnumber the women, yet the dispro- 
portion has none of those results which have been attributed 
to it by some writers on America. In New South Wales, the 
sexes are as 250,000 to 200,000, in Victoria 370,000 to 280,000, 
in New Zealand 130,000 to 80,000, in Queensland 60,000 to 
40,000, in Tasmania 50,000 to 40,000, in West Australia 14,000 
to 8000, and 90,000 to 80,000 in South Australia. In all our 
Southern colonies together, there are a million of men to only 
three-quarters of a million of women; yet with this disproportion, 
which far exceeds that in Western America, not only have the 
women failed to acquire any great share of power, political or 
social, but they are content to occupy a position not relatively 
superior to that held by them at home. 

The " Sewing Clubs " of the war-time are at the bottom of a 
good deal of the " woman movement " in America. At the 
time of greatest need, the ladies of the Northern States formed 
themselves into associations for the supply of lint, of linen, and 
of comforts to the army : the women of a district would meet 



CHAP, vm.] WOJfAJSf. 349 

together daily in some large room, and sew, and chat while 
they were sewing. 

The British section of the Teutonic race seems naturally 
inclined, through the operation of its old interest-begotten pre- 
judices, to rank women where Plato placed them in the 
" Timseus," along with horses and draught cattle ; or to think 
of them much as he did when he said that all the brutes 
derived their origin from man by a series of successive degra- 
dations, of which the first was from man to woman. There is, 
however, one strong reason why the English should, in America, 
have laid aside their prejudices upon this point, retaining them 
in Australia, where the conditions are not the same. Among 
farming peoples, whose women do not work regularly in the 
field, the wom_an, to whom falls the household and superior 
work, is better off than she is among town-dweUing peoples. 
The Americans are mainly a farming, the Australians and 
British mainly a town-dwelling, people. The absence in all 
sections of our race of regular woman labour in the field seems 
to be a remnant of the high estimation in which women were 
held by our German ancestry. In Britain we have, until the 
last few years, been steadily retrograding upon this point. 

It is a serious question how far the natural prejudice of the 
English mind against the labour of what we call " inferior 
races " will be found to extend to half the superior race itself. 
How will I^nglish labourers receive the inevitable competition 
of women in many of their fields ? Woman is at present starved, 
if she works at all, and does not rest content in dependence 
upon some man, by the terrible lowness of wages in every 
employment open to her, and this low rate of wages is itself 
the direct result of the fewness of the occupations which society 
allows her. Where a man can see a hundred crafts in which 
he may engage, a woman ^\tl11 perhaps be permitted to find ten. 
A hundred times as many women as there is room for invade 
each of this small number of employments. In the Australian 
labour-field the prospects of women are no better than they are 
in Europe, and during my residence in Melbourne the Council 
of the Associated Trades passed a resolution to the effect that 
nothing could justify the employment of women in any kind 
of productive labour. 



35 o GREATER BRITAIN; [chap. ix. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Victorian Ports. 

All allowance being made for the great number of wide 
roads for trade, there is still a singular absence of traffic in the 
Melbourne streets. Trade may be said to be transacted only 
upon paper in the city, while the tallow, grain, and wool, which 
form the basis of Australian commerce, do not pass through 
Melbourne, but skirt it, and go by railway to Williamstown, 
Sandridge, and Geelong. 

Geelong, once expected to rival Melbourne, and become the 
first port of all Australia, I found grass-grown and half deserted, 
with but one vessel lying at her wharf At WilHamstown, a 
great fleet of first-class ships was moored alongside the pier. 
When the gold-find at Ballarat took place, Geelong rose fast as 
the digging port, but her citizens chose to complete the railway 
line to Melbourne instead of first opening that to Ballarat, and 
so lost all the up-country trade. Melbourne, having once 
obtained the lead, soon managed to control the Legislature, and 
grants were made for the Echuca Railroad, which tapped the 
Murray, and brought the trade of Upper Queensland and New 
South Wales down to Melbourne, in the interest of the ports 
of Williamstown and Sandridge. Not content with ruining 
Geelong, the Melbourne men have set themselves to ridicule it. 
One of their stories goes that the Geelong streets bear such a 
fine crop of grass, that a free selector has applied to have them 
surveyed and sold to him, under the 42nd clause of the New 
Land Act. Another story tells how a Geelongee lately died, and 
went to heaven. Peter, opening the door to his knock, asked, 
" Where from ? " " Geelong." " Where ? " said Peter. " Gee- 
long." " There's no such place," replied the Apostle. "In 



CHAP, EX.] VICTORIAN PORTS. 351 

Victoria," cried the colonist. " Fetch Ham's AustraHan Atlas," 
called Peter; and when the map was brought and the spot 
shown to him, he replied, " Well, I beg your pardon, but I 
really never had any one here from that place before." 

If Geelong be standing still, which in a colony is the same 
as rapid decline would be with us, the famed wheat country 
around it seems as inexhaustible as it ever was. The whole of 
the Barrabool Range, from Ceres to ]^lount ^Moriac, is one great 
golden waving sheet, save where it is broken by the stunted 
claret-vineyards. Here and there I came upon a group of the 
little daughters of the German vine-dressers, tending and trench- 
ing the plants, ^dth the round eyes, rosy cheeks, and shiny 
pigtails of their native Riidesheim all flourishing beneath the 
Southern Cross. 

The colonial vines are excellent; better, indeed, than the 
growths of California, which, however, they resemble in general 
character. The wines are naturally all Burgundies, and colonial 
imitations of claret, port, and sherry are detestable, and the 
hocks but little better. The Albury Hermitage is a better -svine 
than can be bought in Europe at its price, but in some places 
this wine is sold as Murray Burgundy, while the dealers foist 
horrible stuff upon you under the name of Hermitage. Of the 
wines of New South Wales, White Dallwood is a fair Sauterne, 
and White Cawarra a good Chablis, while for sweet \\qnes the 
Chasselas is cheap ; and the Tokay, the Shiraz, and the still 
IMuscat are full of flavour. With time and care, Australia 
ought to be the vineyard of the world. 

North-west of Geelong, upon the summit of the foot hills 
of the dividing range, lies Ballarat, the head-quarters of deep 
quartz mining, and now no longer a diggers' camp, but a 
graceful city, full of shady boulevards and noble buildings, and 
with a stationary population of thirty thousand. ]My first visit 
was made in the company of the prime ministers of all the 
colonies, who were at ]\Ielbourne nominally for a conference, 
but really to enjoy a holiday and the Intercolonial Exhibition. 
With that extraordinary generosity in the spending of other 
people's money which distinguishes Cabinets, the Victorian 
Government placed special trains, horses, carriages, and hotels 
at our disposal, the result of which was that, feted ever}Tvhere, 



352 GREA TEE BRIT A IN. [chap. ix. 

we saw nothing, and I had to return to Ballarat in order even 
to go through the mines. 

In visiting Lake Learmouth and Clunes, and the mining 
district on each side of Ballarat, I found myself able to discover 
the date of settlement by the names of places, as one finds the 
age of a London suburb by the titles of its terraces. The 
dates run in a wave across the country. St. Arnaud is a town 
between Ballarat and Castlemaine, and Alma lies near to it, 
while Balaklava Hill is near Ballarat, where also are Raglan 
and Sebastopol. Inkermann lies close to Castlemaine, and 
Mount Cathcart bears the name of the general killed at the 
Two-gun Battery, while the Malakhoff diggings, discovered 
doubtless towards the end of the war, lie to the northward, in 
the Wimmera. 

Everywhere I found the interior far hotter than the coast, 
but free from the sudden changes of temperature that occur in 
Melbourne twice or thrice a week throughout the summer, and 
are dangerous to children and to persons of weak health. After 
two or three days of the hot wind, there comes a night, breath- 
less, heavy, still. In the morning the sun rises, once more 
fierce and red. After such a night and davv^n, I have seen the 
shade thermometer in the cool verandahs of the Melbourne 
Club standing at 95^ before ten o'clock, when suddenly the 
sun and sky would change from red and brown to gold and 
blue, and a merry breeze, whistling up from the ice-packs of the 
South Pole and across the Antarctic seas, would lower the tem- 
perature in an hour to 60^ or 65^. After a few days of cold 
and rain, a quiet English morning would be cut in half about 
eleven by a sudden slamming of doors and whirling of dust 
from the north across the town, while darkness came upon the 
streets. Then was heard the cry of " Shut the windows ; here's 
a hot wind," and down would go every window, barred and 
bolted, while the oldest colonists walked out to enjoy the dry 
air and healthy heat. The thick walls of the clubs and private 
houses will keep out the heat for about three days ; but if, as 
sometimes happens, the hot wind lasts longer, then the walls 
are heated through, and the nights are hardly to be borne. Up 
the country, the settlers know nothing of these changes. The 
regular irregularity is peculiar to the Melbourne summer. 



353 



CHAPTER X. 

Tasmania. 

After the parching heat of Austraha, a visit to Tasmania was 
a grateful change. Steaming along Port Dalrymple and up the 
Tamar in the soft sunlight of an English afternoon, we were 
able to look upwards, and enjoy the charming views of wood 
and river, instead of having to stand with downcast head, as in 
the blaze of the Victorian sun. 

The beauty of the Tamar is of a quiet kind : its scenery like 
that of the non-Alpine districts of the west coast of New 
Zealand, but softer and more smiling than is that of even the 
least rude portions of those islands. To one fresh from the 
baked Australian plains, there is likeness between any green 
and humid land and the last unparched country that he may 
have seen. Still, New Zealand cannot show fresher cheeks nor 
homes more cosy than those of the Tamar valley. Somerset- 
shire cannot surpass the orchards of Tasmania, nor Devon 
match its flowers. 

The natural resemblance of Maria Van Diemen's Land (as 
Tasman called it after his betrothed) to England seems to have 
struck the early settlers. In sailing up the Tamar, we had on 
one bank the county of Dorset, with its villages touchingly 
named after those at home, according to their situations, from 
its Lulworth Cove, Corfe Castle, and St. Alban's Head, round 
to Abbotsbury ; and, on our right hand, Devon, with its Sid- 
mouth, Exeter, and Torquay. 

Hurrying through Launceston — a pretty little town, of which 
the banks and post-offtce are models of simple architecture — 
I passed at once across the island southwards to Hobarton, the 
capital. The scenery on the great convict road is not impres- 

2 A 



354 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. x. 

sive. The Tasmanian mountains — detached and rugged masses 
of basal tic rock, from four to five thousand feet in height — are 
wanting in grandeur when seen from a distance, with a fore- 
ground of flat corn-land. It is disheartening, too, in an English 
colony, to see half the houses shut up and deserted, and acre 
upon acre of old wheat-land abandoned to mimosa scrub. The 
people in these portions of the island have worked their lands 
to death, and even guano seems but to galvanize them into a 
momentary life. Since leaving Virginia I had seen no such 
melancholy sight. 

Nature is bountiful enough : in the world there is not a fairer 
climate ; the gum-trees grow to 350 feet, attesting the richness 
of the soil ; and the giant tree-ferns are never injured by heat, 
as in Australia, nor by cold, as in New Zealand. All the fruits 
of Europe are in season at the same time, and the Christmas 
dessert at Hobarton often consists of five-and-twenty distinct 
fresh fruits. Even more than Britain, Tasmania may be said 
to present in a small area an epitome of the globe : mountain 
and plain, forest and rolling prairie-land, rivers and grand 
capes, and the noblest harbour in the world, all are contained 
in a country the size of Ireland. It is unhappily not only in 
this sense that Tasmania is the Ireland of the South. 

Beautiful as is the view of Hobarton from Mount Wellington, 
the spurs in the foreground clothed with a crimson carpet by a 
heath-like plant ; the city nestled under the basaltic columns 
of the crags — even here it is difficult to avoid a certain gloom 
when the eye, sweeping over the vast expanse of Storm Bay 
and D'Entrecasteaux Sound, discovers only three great ships in 
a harbour fitted to contain the navies of the world. 

The scene first of the horrible deeds of early convict days at 
Macquarie Harbour and Port Arthur, and lately of the still 
more frightful massacres of the aboriginal inhabitants of the 
isle, Van Dieman's Land has never been a name of happy 
omen, and now the island, in changing its title, seems not to 
have escaped from the former blight. The poetry of the 
English village names, met with throughout Tasmania, vanishes 
before the recollection of the circumstances under which the 
harsher native terms came to be supplanted. Fifty years ago, 
our colonists found in Tasmania a powerful and numerous 




2 A 2 



CHAP. X.] TASMANIA. 357 

though degraded native race. At this moment, three old 
women and a lad who dwell on Gun-carriage Rock, in Bass's 
Straits, are all who remain of the aboriginal population of the 
island. 

We live in an age of mild humanity, we are often told ; but, 
whatever the polish of manner and of minds in the old country, 
in outlying portions of the empire there is no lack of the old 
savagery of our race. Battues of the natives were conducted 
by the military in Tasmania not more than twenty years ago, 
and are not unknown even now among the Queensland settlers. 
Let it not be thought that Englishmen go out to murder natives 
unprovoked ; they have that provocation for which even the 
Spaniards in Mexico used to wait, and which the Brazilians 
wait for now — the provocation of robberies committed in the 
neighbourhood by natives unknown. It is not that there is no 
offence to punish, it is that the punishment is indiscriminate, 
that even when it falls upon the guilty it visits men who know 
no better. Where one wretched untaught native pilfers from a 
sheep-station, on the Queensland Downs, a dozen will be shot 
by the settlers "as an example," and the remainder of the 
tribe brought back to the district to be fed and kept, until 
whisky, rum, and other devils' missionaries have done their 
work. 

Nothing will persuade the rougher class of Queensland 
settlers that the " black -fellow " and his "jin" are human. 
They tell you freely that they look upon the native Australian 
as an ingenious kind of monkey, and that it is not for us to 
talk too much of the treatment of the " jins," or native women, 
while the " wrens " of the Curragh exist among ourselves. No 
great distance appears to separate us from the days when the 
Spaniards in the West Indies used to brand on the face and 
arms all the natives they could catch, and gamble them away 
for wine. 

Though not more than three or four million acres out oi 
seventeen million acres of land in Tasmania have as yet been 
alienated by the Crown, the population has increased only by 
15,000 in the last ten years. Such is the indolence of the 
settlers, that vast tracts of land in the central plain, once fertile 
under irrigation, have been allowed to fall back into a desert 



358 GREATER BRITAIX. [chap. x. 

State from sheer neglect of the dams and conduits. Though 
iron and coal are abundant, they are seldom if ever worked, 
and one house in every thirty-two in the whole island is licensed 
for the sale of spirits, of which the annual consumption exceeds 
live gallons a head for every man, woman, and child in the 
population. Tasmania reached her maximum of revenue in 
1858, and her maximum of trade in 1853. 

The curse of the country is the indolence of its lotus-eating 
population, who, like all dwellers in climates cool but winter- 
less, are content to dream away their lives in drowsiness to 
which the habits of a hotter but less equable clime — Queens- 
land, for example — are energy itself In addition, however, to 
this natural cause of decline. Van Diemen's Land is not yet 
free from all traces of the convict blood, nor from the evil 
effects of reliance on forced labour. It is, indeed, but a few 
years since the island was one great gaol, and in 1853 there 
were still 20,000 actual convicts in the country. The old free 
settlers will tell you that the deadly shade of slave labour has 
not blighted Jamaica more thoroughly than that of convict 
labour has Van Diemen's Land. 

Seventy miles north-west of Hobarton is a sheet of water 
called Macquarie Harbour, the deeds wrought upon the shores 
of which are not to be forgotten in a decade. In 1823, there 
were 228 prisoners at Macquarie Harbour, to whom, in the 
year, 229 floggings and 9925 lashes were ordered, 9100 lashes 
being actually inflicted. The cat was, by order of the autho- 
rities, soaked in salt water and dried in the sun before being 
used. There was at Macquarie Harbour one convict overseer 
who took a delight in seeing his companions punished. A day 
seldom passed without five or six being flogged on his reports. 
The convicts were at his mercy. In a space of five years, 
during which the prisoners at Macquarie Harbour averaged 
250 in number, there were 835 floggings and 32,723 lashes 
administered. In the same five years, 112 convicts absconded 
from this settlement, of whom ten were killed and eaten by 
their companions, seventy-five perished in the bush with or 
without cannibalism, two were captured with portions of human 
flesh in their possession, and died in hospital, two were shot, 
sixteen were hanged for murder and cannibalism, and seven are 



CHAP. X."] TASMANIA. 359 

reported to have made good their escape, though this is by no 
means certain. 

It has been stated by a Catholic missionary bishop in his 
evidence before a Royal Commission, that when, after a mutiny 
at one of the stations, he read out to his men the names of 
thirty-one condemned to death, they with one accord fell upon 
their knees, and solemnly thanked God that they were to be 
delivered from that horrible place. Men were known to com- 
mit murder that they might be sent away for trial, preferring 
deadi to Macquarie Harbour. 

The escapes were often made with the deliberate expectation 
of death, the men perfectly knowing that they would have to 
draw lots for which should be killed and eaten. Nothing has 
ever been sworn to in the history of the world which, for re- 
volting atrocity, can compare with the conduct of the Pierce- 
Greenhill party during their attempted escape. The testimony 
of Pierce is a revelation of the depths of degradation to which 
man can descend. The most fearful thought, when we hear 
of these Tasmanian horrors, is that probably many of those 
subjected to them were originally guiltless. If only one in a 
thousand was an innocent man, four human beings were con- 
signed each year to hell on earth. We think, too, that the 
age of transportation for mere political offences has long gone 
by, yet it is but eleven or twelve years since Mr. Frost received 
his pardon, after serving for sixteen years amid the horrors of 
Port Arthur. 

Tasmania has never been able to rid herself of the convict 
population in any great degree, for the free colonies have 
always kept a jealous watch upon her emigrants. Even at 
the time of the great gold-rush to Victoria, almost every "Tas- 
manian bolter " and many a suspected but innocent man was 
seized upon his landing, and thrown into Pentridge Gaol, to 
toil within its twenty-foot walls till death should come to his 
relief. Even now, men of wealth and station in Victoria are 
sometimes discovered to have been " bolters " in the digging 
times, and are at the mercy of their neighbours and the police, 
unless the Governor can be wheedled into granting pardons 
for their former deeds, A wealthy Victorian was arrested as a 
" Tasmanian bolter " while I was in the colony. 



36o .GREATER BRIT AW. [chap. x. 

.. The passport system is still in force in the free colonies with 
regard to passengers arriving from penal settlements, and there 
is a fine of ;£ioo inflicted upon captains of ships bringing 
convicts into Melbourne. The conditional pardons granted to 
prisoners in West Australia and in Tasmania generally contain 
words permitting the convict to visit any portion of the world 
except the British isles, but the clause is a mere dead letter, 
for none of our free colonies will receive even our pardoned 
convicts. 

It is hard to quarrel with the course the colonies have taken 
in this matter, for to them the transportation system appears 
in the light of moral vitriol-throwing ; still, there is a wide dis- 
tinction to be drawn between the action of the New South 
Welsh and that of the New Yorkers, when they declared to a 
British Government of the last century, that nothing should 
induce them to accept the labour of " white English slaves :" 
the Sydney people have enjoyed the advantages of the system 
they ndw blame. Even the Victorians and South Australians, 
who have never had convicts in their land, can be met by 
argument. The Australian colonies, it might be urged, were 
planted for the sole purpose of affording a suitable soil for the 
reception of British criminals ; in face of this fact, the remon- 
strances of the free colonists read somewhat oddly, for it would 
seem as though men who quitted, with open eyes, Great Britain 
to make their home in the spots which their Government had 
chosen as its giant prisons have little right to pretend to rouse 
themselves on a sudden, and cry out that England is pouring 
the scum of her soil on to a free land, and that they must rise 
and defend themselves against the grievous wrong. Weighing, 
however, calmly, the good and evil, we cannot avoid the con- 
clusion that the Victorians have much reason to object to a 
system which sends to another country a man who is too bad 
for his own, just as Jersey rogues are transported to South- 
ampton. The Victorian proposition of selecting the most ruf- 
fianly of the colonial expirees, and shipping them to England 
in exchange for the convicts that we might send to Australia, 
was but a plagiarism on the conduct of the Virginians in a 
similar case, who quietly began to freight a ship with snakes. 

The only cure for Tasmania, unless one is to be found iii 



CHAP. X.] TASMANIA. 361 

the mere lapse of years, lies in annexation to Victoria; a 
measure strongly wished for by a considerable party in each of 
the colonies concerned. No two countries in the world are 
more manifestly destined by nature to be complementary to 
each other. 

Owing to the small size of the country, and the. great moral 
influence of the landed gentry, Tasmanian politics are singu- 
larly peaceful. For the Lower House elections, the suffrage 
rests upon a household, not a manhood basis, as in Victoria 
and New South Wales ; and for the Upper House it is placed 
^t ^£"500 in any property, or ^50 a year in freehold land. 
Tasmanian society is cast in a more aristocratic shape than is 
tliat of Queensland, with this exception the most oligarchical 
of all our colonies ; but even here, as in the other colonies and 
the United States, the ballot is supported by the Conservatives. 
Unlike what generally happens in America, the vote in the 
great majority of cases is here kept secret, bribery is unknown, 
and, the public " nomination " of candidates having been 
abohshed, elections pass off in perfect quiet. In the course of 
a dozen conversations in Tasmania, I met with one man who 
attacked the ballot. He was the first person, aristocrat or 
democrat, conservative or liberal, male or female, silly or wise, 
by whom I had found the ballot opposed since I left England. 

The method in which the ballot is conducted is simple 
enough. The returning officer sits in an outer room, beyond 
which is an inner chamber with only one door, but with a desk. 
The voter gives his name to the returning officer, and receives 
a white ticket bearing his number on the register. On the 
ticket the names of the candidates are printed alphabetically, 
and the voter, taking the paper into the other room, makes a 
cross opposite to the name of each candidate for whom he 
votes, and then brings the paper folded to the returning officer, 
who puts it in the box. In New South Wales and Victoria, he 
runs his pen through all the names excepting those for which 
he intends to vote, and himself deposits the ticket in the box, 
the returning officer watching him, to see that he does not 
carry out his ticket to show it to his bribers, and then send it 
in again by a man on his own side. One scrutineer for each 
candidate watches the opening of the box. In New South ' 



362 GREATER BEITATK. [chap. x. 

Wales, the voting papers, after having been sealed up, are kept 
for five years, in order to allow of the verification of the 
number of votes said to have been cast ; but in Tasmania they 
are destroyed immediately after the declaration of the poll. 

Escaping from the capital and its Lilliputian pohtics, I 
sailed up the Derwent to New Norfolk. The river reminds 
the traveller sometimes of the Meuse, but oftener of the Dart, 
and unites the beauties of both streams. The scenery is 
exquisitely set in a framework of hops ; for not only are all the 
flats covered with luxuriant bines, but the hills between which 
you survey the views have also each its " garden," the bines 
being trained upon a wire trellis. 

A lovely ride was that from New Norfolk to the Panshanger 
salmon-ponds, where the acclimatization of the Enghsh fish has 
lately been attempted. The track, now cut along the river 
cliff", now lost in the mimosa scrub, off'ers a succession of 
prospects, each more charming than the one before it ; and 
that from the ponds themselves is a repetition of the view 
along the vale of the Towy, from Steele's house near Caer- 
marthen. Trout of a foot long, and salmon of an inch, re- 
warded us (in the spirit) for our ride, but we were called on to 
express our belief in the statement, that salmon " returned from 

the sea" have lately been seen in the river. Father , 

the Catholic parish priest, " that saw 'em," is the hero of the 
day, and his past experiences upon the Shannon are quoted as 
testimonies to his infallibility in fish questions. My hosts of 
New Norfolk had their fears lest the reverend gentleman should 
be lynched, if it were finally proved that he had been mis- 
taken. 

The salmon madness will at least have two results : the 
catalogue of indigenous birds will be reduced to a blank sheet, 
for every wretched Tasmanian bird that never saw a salmon 
egg in all its hfe is shot down and nailed to a post for fear it 
should eat the ova ; and the British wasp will be acclimatized 
in the southern hemisphere. One is known to have arrived in 
the last box of ova, and to have survived with apparent cheer- 
fulness his loo days in ice. Happy fellow, to cross the line in 
so cool a fashion ! 

The chief drawbacks to Tasmanian picnics and excursions 



CHAP. X.] TASMANIA. 363 

are the snakes, which are as numerous throughout the island as 
they are round Sydney. One of the convicts in a letter home 
once wrote : " Parrots is as thick as crows, and snakes is very 
bad, fourteen to sixteen feet long;" but in sober truth the 
snakes are chieflv small. 

The wonderful " snake stories " that in the colonial papers 
take the place of the English " triple birth " and " gigantic 
gooseberry " are all written in vacation time by the students at 
Melbourne University; but a true one that I heard in Hobarton 
is too good to be lost. The Chief Justice of the island, who, 
in his leisure time is an amateur naturalist, and collects speci- 
mens for European collections in his walks, told me that it was 
his practice, after killing a snake, to carry it into Hobarton tied 
to a stick by a double lashing. A few days before my visit, on 
entering his hall, where an hour before he had hung his stick 
with a rare snake in readiness for the Government naturalist, he 
found to his horror that the viper had been only scotched, and 
that he had made use of his regained life to free himself from 
the string which confined his head and neck. He was still 
tied by the tail, so he was swinging to and fro, or " squirming 
around," as some Americans would say, with open mouth and 
protmded tongue. When lassoing with a piece of twine had 
been tried in vain, my friend fetched a gun, and succeeded in 
killing the snake and much damaging the stone-work of his 
vestibule. 

After a week's sojourn in the neighbourhood of Hobarton, I 
again crossed the island, but this time, by a night of piercing 
moonlight such as can be witnessed only in the dry air of the 
far south. High in the heavens, and opposite the moon, was 
the solemn constellation of the Southern Cross, sharply re- 
lieved upon the pitchy background of the Magellanic clouds, 
while the weird-tinted stars which vary the night-sky of the 
southern hemisphere stood out from the blue firmament else- 
where. The next day I was again in Melbourne. 



364 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xi. 



CHAPTER XI. 

Confederation. 

Melbourne is unusually gay ; for at a shapely palace in the 
centre of the city the second great Intercolonial Exhibition is 
being held, and, as its last days are drawing to their close, fifty 
thousand people — a great number for the colonies — visit the 
building every week. There are exhibitors from each of our 
seven southern colonies, and from French New Caledonia, 
Netherlandish India, and the Mauritius. It is strange to re- 
member now that in the colonization both of New Zealand and 
of Australia, we were the successful rivals of the French only 
after having been behind them in awakening to the advisability 
of an occupation of those countries. In the case of New Zealand, 
the French fleet was anticipated three several times by the fore- 
thought and decision of our naval officers on the station ; and 
in the case of Australia, the whole south coast was actually 
named " La Terre Napoleon," and surveyed for colonization by 
Captain Baudin in 1800. New Caledonia, on the other hand, 
was named and occupied by ourselves, and afterwards abandoned 
to the French. 

The present remarkable exhibition of the products of the 
Australias, coming just at the time when the border customs 
between Victoria and New South Wales have been abolished 
by agreement, and when all seems to point to the formation of 
a customs union between the colonies, leads men to look still 
further forward, and to expect confederation. It is worthy of 
notice at this conjuncture that the Australian Protectionists, 
as a rule, refuse to be protected against their immediate 
neighbours, just as those of America protect the manufactures 
of the Union rather than of single States. They tell us that 



CHAP. XI.] CONFEDERATION. 365 

they can point, with regard to Europe, to pauper labour, but 
that they have no case as against the sister colonies ; they wish, 
they say, to obtain a wide market for the sale of the produce 
of each colony : the nationality they would create is to be 
Australian, not provincial. 

Already there is postal union, and a partial customs union, 
and confederation itself, however distant in fact, has been very 
lately brought about in the spirit by the efforts of the London 
press, one well-known paper having three times in a single article 
called the Governor of New South Wales by the sounding title 
of " Governor-General of the Australasian Colonies," to which 
he has, of course, not the faintest claim. 

There are many difficulties in the way of confederation. The 
leading merchants and squatters of Victoria are in favour of it ; 
but not so those of the poorer or less populous colonies, where 
there is much fear of being swamped. The costliness of the 
federal government of New Zealand is a warning against over 
hasty confederation. Victoria, too, would probably insist upon 
the exclusion of West Australia, on account of her convict popu- 
lation. The continental theory is undreamt of by Australians, 
owing to their having always been inhabitants of comparatively 
small States, and not, like dwellers in the organized territories of 
America, potentially citizens of a vast and homogeneous empire. 

The choice of capital will, here as in Canada, be a matter of 
peculiar difficulty. It is to be hoped by all lovers of freedom 
that some hitherto unknown village will be selected. There is 
in all great cities a strong tendency to Imperialism. Bad pave- 
ment, much noise, narrow lanes, blockaded streets, all these 
things are ill dealt with by free government, we are told. English- 
men who have been in Paris, Americans who know St. Peters- 
burg, forgetting that without the Emperor the Prefet is impossible, 
cry out that London, that New York, in their turn need a Hauss- 
mann. In this tendency lies a terrible danger to free States — a 
danger avoided, however, or greatly lessened, by the seat of 
the Legislature being placed, as in Canada and the United States, 
far away from the great cities. Were Melbourne to become the 
seat of government, nothing could prevent the distant colonies 
from increasing the already gigantic power of that city by 
choosing her merchants as their representatives. 



366 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xi. 

The bearing of confederation upon Imperial interests is a 
more simple matter. Although union will tend to the earher 
independence of the colonies, yet, if federated, they are more 
likely to be a valuable ally than they could be if remaining so 
many separate countries. They would also be a stronger enemy ; 
but distance will make all their wars naval, and a strong fleet 
would be more valuable to us as a friend than dangerous as an 
enemy, unless in the case of a coalition against us, in which it 
would probably not be the interest of Australia to join. 

From the colonial point of view, federation would tend to 
secure to the Australians better general and local government 
than they possess at present. It is absurd to expect that colonial 
governors should be upon good terms with their charges when 
we shift men every four years — say from Demerara to New 
South Wales, or from Jamaica to Victoria. The unhappy 
governor loses half a year in moving to his post, and a couple 
of years in coming to understand the circumstances of his new 
province, and then settles down to be successful in the ruling of 
educated whites under democratic institutions only if he can 
entirely throw aside the whole of his experience, derived as it 
will probably have been from the despotic sway over blacks. 
We never can have a set of colonial governors fit for Australia 
until the Australian governments are made a distinct service, 
and entirely separated from those of the West Indies, of Africa, 
and Hong Kong. 

Besides improving the government, confederation would 
lend to every colonist the dignity derived from citizenship of a 
great country — a point the importance of which will not be 
contested by any one who has been in America since the war. 

It is not easy to resist the conclusion that confederation is in 
every way desirable. If it leads to independence, we must say 
to the Australians what Houmai ta Whiti said in his great 
speech to the progenitors of the Maori race Avhen they Avere 
quitting Hawaiki : " Depart, and dwell in peace ; let there be 
no quarrelling amongst you, but build up a great people." 



36? 



CHA.PTER XII. 

Adelaide. 

The capital of South Australia is reputed the hottest of all the 
cities that are chiefly inhabited by the English race, and as I 
neared it through the Backstairs Passage into the Gulf of St. 
Vincent, past Kangaroo Island, and still more when I landed 
at Glenelg, I came to the conclusion that its reputation is 
deserved. The extreme heat which characterizes South Australia 
is to some extent a consequence of its lying as far north as 
New South Wales and Queensland, and so far inland as to 
escape the breeze by which their coasts are visited ; for although 
by " South Australia " we should, in the southern hemisphere, 
naturally understand that portion of Australia which was farthest 
from the tropics, yet it is a curious fact that the whole colony 
of Victoria is to the south of Adelaide, and that nearly all the 
northernmost points of the continent now lie within the country 
misnamed " South Australia." 

The immense northern territory, being supposed to be value 
less, has generously been handed over to South Australia, which 
thus becomes the widest of all British colonies, and nearly as 
large as EngHsh Hindostan. If the present great expenditure 
succeeds in causing the discovery of any good land at the 
north, it will of course at once be made a separate colony. The 
only important result that seems likely to follow from this annex- 
ation of the northern territory to South Australia is that school- 
boys' geography will suffer ; one would expect, indeed, that a 
total destmction of all principle in the next generation will be 
the inevitable result of so rude a blow to confidence in books 
and masters as the assurance from a teacher's lips that the two 
most remote countries of Australia are united under one colonial 



308 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xii. 

government, and that the northernmost points of the whole 
continent are situated in South Austraha. Boys will probably 
conclude that, across the line, south becomes north and north 
south, and that in Australia the sun rises in the west. 

Instead of gold, wheat, sheep, as in Victoria, the staples 
here are wheat, sheep, copper ; and my introduction to South 
Australia was characteristic of the colony, for I found in Port 
Adelaide, where I first set foot, not only every store filled to 
overflowing, but piles of wheat-sacks in the roadways, and lines 
of wheat-cars on the sidings of railways, without even a tarpaulin 
to cover the grain. 

Of all the mysteries of commerce, those that concern the 
wheat and flour trade are, perhaps, the strangest to the un- 
initiated. Breadstuffs are still sent from California and Chili 
to Victoria, yet from Adelaide, close at hand, wheat is being 
sent to England and flour to New York ! 

There can be no doubt but that ultimately Victoria and 
Tasmania will at least succeed in feeding themselves. It is 
probable that neither New Zealand nor Queensland will find it 
to their interest to do the like. Wool-growing in the former, 
and cotton and wool in the latter, will continue to pay better 
than wheat in the greater portion of their lands. Their granary, 
and that possibly of the city of Sydney itself, will be found in 
South Australia, especially if land capable of carrying wheat be 
discovered to the westward of the settlements about Adelaide, 
That the Australias, Chili, California, Oregon, and other Pacific 
States can ever export largely of wheat to Europe is more than 
doubtful. If manufactures spring up on this side the world, 
these countries, whatever their fertility, will have at least enough 
to do to feed themselves. 

As I entered the streets of the "farinaceous village," as 
Adelaide is called' by conceited Victorians, I was struck with 
the amount of character they exhibit both in the way of buildings, 
of faces, and of dress. The South Australians have far more 
idea of adapting their houses and clothes to their climate than 
have the people of the other colonies, and their faces adapt 
themselves. The verandahs to the shops are sufficiently close 
to form a perfect piazza ; the people rise early, and water the 
side-walk in front of their houses ; and you never meet a man 



CHAP, XII.] ADELAIDE. 369 

who does not make some sacrifice to the heat, in the shape of 
puggree, silk coat, or sun-hehnet ; but the women are nearly as 
unwise here as in the other colonies, and persist in going about 
in shawls and coloured dresses. Might they but see a few of 
the Richmond or Baltimore ladies in their pure white musHn 
frocks, and die of envy, for the dress most suited to a hot dry 
climate is also the most beautiful under its bright sun. 

The German element is strong in South Australia, and there 
are whole villages in the wheat-country where English is never 
spoken ; but here, as in America, there has been no mingling 
of the races, and the whole divergence from the British types is 
traceable to climatic influences, and especially dry heat. The 
men born here are thin, and fine-featured, somewhat like the 
Pitcairn Islanders, while the women are all alike — small, pretty, 
and bright, but with a burnt-up look. The haggard eye might, 
perhaps, be ascribed to the dreaded presence of my old friend 
of the Rocky Mountains, the brulot sand-fly. The inhabitants 
of all hot dry countries speak from the head, and not the chest, 
and the English in Australia are acquiring this habit ; you 
seldom find a " corn-stalk" who speaks well from the chest. 

The air is crisp and hot — crisper and hotter even than that of 
Melbourne. The shaded thermometer upon the Victorian coast 
seldom reaches 110°, but in the town of Adelaide, 117° has been 
recorded by the Government astronomer. Such is the figure of 
the Australian continent, that Adelaide, although a seaport 
town, lies, as it were, inland. Catching the heated gales from 
three of the cardinal points, Adelaide has a summer six months 
long, and is exposed to a fearful continuance of hot winds ; 
nevertheless, 105° at Adelaide is easier borne than 95° in the 
shade at Sydney. 

Nothing can be prettier than the outskirts of the capital. In 
laying out Adelaide, its founders have reserved a park about a 
quarter of a mile in width all round the city. This gives a 
charming drive nine miles long, outside which again are the 
olive-yards and villas of the citizens. Hedges of the yellow 
cactus, or of the graceful Kangaroo Island acacia, bound the 
gardens, and the pomegranate, magnolia, fig, and aloe grow 
upon every lawn. Five miles to the eastward are the cool 
wooded hills of the Mount Lofty Range, on the tops of which 

2 B 



3 70 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xii. 

are grown the English fruits for which the plains afford no shade 
or moisture. 

Crossing the Adelaide plains, for fifty miles by railway, to 
Kapunda, I beheld one great wheat-field without a break. The 
country was finer than any stretch of equal extent in California 
or Victoria, and looked as though the crops were "standing"' — 
which in one sense they were, though the grain was long since 
"in." The fact is that the farmers use the Ridley machines, 
by which the ears are thrashed out without any cutting of the 
straw, which continues to stand, and is finally ploughed in at 
leisure, except in the neighbourhood of Adelaide. There would 
be a golden age of partridge-shooting in Old England did the 
climate and the price of straw allow of the adoption of the 
Ridley reaper. Under this system, South Australia grows 'on 
the average six times as much wheat as she can use, whereas, if 
reaping had to be paid for, she could only grow from one and a 
half times to twice as much as would meet the home demand. 

In this country, as in America, "bad farming" is found to 
pay, for with cheap land, the Ridley reaper, and good markets, 
light crops without labour, except the peasant-proprietor's own 
toil, pay well when heavy crops obtained by the use of hired 
labour would not reimburse the capitalist. The amount of land 
under cultivation has been trebled in the last seven years, and 
half a million acres are now under wheat. South Australia has 
this year produced seven times as much grain as she can 
consume, and twelve acres are under wheat for every adult male 
of the population of the colony. 

A committee has been lately sitting in New South Wales " to 
consider the state of the colony." To judge from the evidence 
taken before it, the members seemed to have conceived that 
their task was to inquire why South Australia prospered above 
New South Wales. Frugality of the people, especially of the 
Germans, and fertility of the soil were the reasons which they 
gave for the result, but it is impossible not to see that the success 
of South Australia is but another instance of the triumph of 
small proprietors, of whom there are now some seven or eight 
thousand in the colony, and who were brought here by the 
adoption of the Wakefield land system. 

In the early days of the colony, land was sold at a good price 



CHAP. XII.] ADELAIDE. 371 

in 130-acre sections, with one acre of town-land to each agri- 
cultural section. Now, under rules made at home, but confirmed 
after the introduction of self-government, land is sold by auction, 
with a reserved price of ;£"i an acre, but when once a block 
has passed the hammer, it can for ever be taken up at ;£i the 
acre without further competition. The Land Fund is kept 
separate from the other revenue, and a few permanent charges, 
such as that for the aborigines, being paid out of it, the remainder 
is divided into three portions, of which two are destined for 
public works, and one for immigration. 

There is a marvellous contrast to be drawn between the 
success which has attended the Wakefield system in South 
Australia and the total failure, in the neighbouring colony of 
West Australia, of the old system, under which, vast tracts of 
land being alienated for small prices to the Crown, there remains 
no fund for introducing that abundant supply of labour without 
which the land is useless. 

Adelaide is so distant from Europe that no immigrants come 
of themselves, and, in the assisted importation of both men and 
women, the relative proportions of English, Scotch, and Irish 
that exist at home are carefully preserved ; by which simple 
precaution the colony is_saved from an organic change of type 
such as that which threatens all America, although it would, of 
course, be idle to deny that the restriction is aimed against the 
Irish. 

The greatest difficulty of young countries lies in the want of 
women : not only is this a bar to the natural increase of popu- 
lation ; it is a deficiency preventive of permanency, destructive 
of religion : where woman is not, there can be no home, no 
country. 

How to obtain a supply of marriageable girls is a question 
which Canada, Tasmania, South Australia, and New South 
Wales, have each in their turn attempted to solve by the arti- 
ficial introduction of Irish workhouse girls. The difficulty 
apparently got rid of, we begin to find that it is not so much as 
fairly seen; we have yet to look it "squarely" in the face. 
The point of the matter is that we should find not girls, but 
honest girls — notwomen merely, but women fit to bear famifies, 
in a free State. 

2 B 2 



3 72 - GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xii. 

One of the colonial superintendents, writing of a lately- 
received batch of Irish workhouse girls, has said that, if these 
are the " well-conducted girls, he should be curious to see a few 
of the evil-disposed." While in South Australia, I read the 
details of the landing of a similar party of women, from 
Limerick workhouse, one Sunday afternoon at Point Levi, the 
Lambeth of Quebec. Although supplied by the city authorities 
with meat and drink, and ordered to leave for Montreal at early 
morning, nothing could be more abominable than their conduct 
in the meanwhile. They sold baggage, bonnets, combs, cloaks, 
and scarves, keeping on nothing but their crinolines and sense- 
less finery. With the pence they thus collected they bought 
corn-whisky, and in a few hours were yelling, fighting, swearing, 
wallowing in beastly drunkenness ; and by the time the autho- 
rities came down to pack them off by train, they were as fiends, 
mad with rum and whisky. At five in the morning, they reached 
the Catholic Home at Montreal, where the pious nuns were 
shocked and horrified at their grossness of conduct and lewd 
speech ; nothing should force them, they declared, ever again to 
take into their peaceable asylum the Irish workhouse girls. This 
was no exceptional case : the reports from South Australia, 
from Tasmania, can show as bad ; and in Canada such conduct 
on the part of the freshly-landed girls is common. A Tas- 
manian magistrate has stated in evidence before a Parlia- 
mentary Committee that once when his wife was in ill health he 
went to one of the immigration offices, and applied for a decent 
woman to attend on a sick lady. The woman was sent down, 
and found next day in her room lying on the bed in a state best 
pictured in her own words : '^ Here I am with my yard of clay, 
blowing a cloud, you say.'' 

It is evident that a batch of thoroughly bad girls costs a 
colony from first to last, in the way of prisons, hospitals, and 
public morals, ten times as much as would the free passages 
across the seas of an equal number of worthy Irish women, 
free from the workhouse taint. Of one of these gangs which 
landed in Quebec not many years ago, it has been asserted by 
the immigration superintendents that the traces are visible to 
this day, for wherever the women went, " sin, and shame, and 
death were in their track." The Irish unions have no desire in 



CHAP. XII.] ADELAIDE. 373 

the matter beyond that of getting rid of their most abandoned 
girls ; their interests and those of the colonies they supply are 
diametrically opposed. No inspection, no agreements, no 
supervision can be effective in the face of facts like these. The 
class that the unions can afford to send, Canada and Tasmania 
cannot afford to keep. Women are sent out with babies in 
their arms ; no one will take them into service because the 
children are in the way, and in a few weeks they fall chargeable 
on one of the colonial benevolent societies, to be kept till the 
children grow up or the mothers die. Even when the girls are 
not so wholly vicious as to be useless in service, they are utterly 
ignorant of everything they ought to know. Of neither domestic 
nor farm-work have they a grain of knowledge. Of thirteen 
who were lately sent to an up-country town, but one knew how 
to cook, or wash, or milk, or iron, while three of them had 
agreed to refuse employment unless they were engaged to serve 
together. The agents are at their wits' ends ; either the girls 
are so notoriously infamous in their ways of life that no one 
will hire them, or else they are so extravagant in their new- 
found " independence " that they on their side will not be hired. 
Meanwhile the Irish authorities lay every evil upon the long 
sea voyage. They say that they select the best of girls, but 
that a {&w days at sea sufhce to demoralize them. 

The colonies could not do better than combine for the 
establishment of a new and more efficient emigration agency in 
Ireland. To avoid the evil, by as far as possible refusing to 
meet it face to face. South Australia has put restrictions on her 
Irish immigration ; for there, as in America, it is found that the 
Scotch and Germans are the best of immigrants. The Scotch 
are not more successful in Adelaide than everywhere in the 
known world. Half the most prominent among the statesmen 
of the Canadian Confederation, of Victoria, and of Queensland, 
are born Scots, and all the great merchants of India are of the 
same nation. Whether it be that the Scotch emigrants are for 
the most part men of better education than those of other 
nations, of whose citizens only the poorest and most ignorant 
are known to emigrate, or whether the Scotchman owes his 
uniform success in every climate to his perseverance or his 
shrewdness, the fact remains, that wherever abroad you come 



3 74 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xii. 

across a Scotchman, you invariably find him prosperous and 
respected. 

The Scotch emigrant is a man who leaves Scotland because 
he wishes to rise faster and higher than he can at home, whereas 
the emigrant Irishman quits Galway or County Cork only 
because there is no longer food or shelter for him there. The 
Scotchman crosses the seas in calculating contentment; the 
Irishman in sorrow and despair. 

At the Burra Burra and Kapunda copper-mines there is not 
much to see, so my last days in South Australia were given to 
the political life of the colony, which presents one singular 
feature. For the elections to the Council or Upper House, for 
which the franchise is a freehold worth £^o, or a leasehold of 
;£"2o a year, the whole country forms but a single district, and 
the majority elect their men. In a country where party feeling 
runs high, such a system would evidently unite almost all the 
evils conceivable in a plan of representation, but in a peaceful 
colony it undoubtedly works well. Having absolute power in 
their hands, the majority here, as in the selection of a governor 
for an American State, use their position with great prudence, 
and make choice of the best men that the country can produce. 
The franchise for the Lower House, for the elections to which 
the country is "districted," is the simple one of six months' 
residence, which with the ballot gives excellent results. 

The day that I left Adelaide was also that upon which 
Captain Cadell, the opener of the Murray to trade, sailed with 
his naval expedition to fix upon a capital for the Northern 
territory ; that coast of tropical Australia which faces the 
Moluccas. As Governor Gilpin had pressed me to stay, he 
pressed me to go with him, making as an inducement a promise 
to name after me either " a city " or a headland. He said he 
should advise me to select the headland, because that would 
remain, whereas the city probably would not. When I pleaded 
that he had no authority to carry passengers, he off"ered to take 
me as his surgeon. Hitherto the expeditions have discovered 
nothing but natives, mangroves, alligators, and sea-slugs ; and 
the whole of the money received from capitalists at home, for 
300,000 acres of land to be surveyed and handed over to them 
in North Australia, being now exhausted, the Government are 



CHAP. XII.] ADELAIDE. 3 75 

seriously thinking of reimbursing the investors and giving up 
the search for land. It would be as cheap to colonize 
equatorial Africa from Adelaide, as tropical Australia. If the 
Northern territory is ever to be rendered habitable, it must be 
by Queensland that the work is done. 

It is not certain that North Australia may not be found to 
yield gold in plenty. In a little-known manuscript of the 
seventeenth century, the north-west of Australia is called " The 
land of gold /' and we are told that the fishermen of Solor, 
driven on to this land of gold by stress of weather, picked up 
in a few hours their boat full of gold nuggets, and returned in 
safety. They never dared repeat their voyage, on account of 
their dread of the unknown seas ; but Manoel Godinho de Eredia 
was commissioned by the Portuguese Lord Admiral of India to 
explore this gold land, and enrich the Crown of Portugal by 
the capture of the treasures it contained. It would be strange 
enough if gold came to be discovered on the north-west coast, 
in the spot from which the Portuguese reported their discovery. 

By dawn, after one of the most stifling of Australian nights, 
I left Port Adelaide for King George's Sound. A long narrow 
belt of a clear red-yellow light lay glowing along the horizon to 
the east, portending heat and drought ; elsewhere the skies were 
of a deep blue-black. As we steamed past Kangaroo Island, 
and through Investigator Straits, the sun shot up from the tawny 
plains, and the hot wind from the northern desert, rising on a 
sudden after the stillness of the night, whirled clouds of sand 
over the surface of the bay. 



376 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiii. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
Transportation. 

After five days' steady steaming across the great Australian 
bight, north of which hes the true " Terra AustraUs incognita/' 
I reached King George's Sound — " Le Port du Roi Georges en 
Austrahe," as I saw it written on a letter in the gaol. At the 
shore end of a land-locked harbour, the little houses of bright 
white stone that make up the town of Albany peep out from 
among geranium-covered rocks. The climate, unlike that of 
the greater portion of Australia, is damp and tropical, and the 
dense scrub is a mass of flowering bushes, with bright blue and 
scarlet blooms and curiously-cut leaves. 

The contrast between the scenery and the people of West 
Australia is great indeed. The aboriginal inhabitants of Albany 
were represented by a tribe of filthy natives — tall, half-starved, 
their heads bedaubed with red ochre, and their faces smeared 
with yellow clay ; the " colonists " by a gang of fiend-faced 
convicts working in chains upon the esplanade, and a group of 
scowling expirees hunting a monkey with bull-dogs on the pier ; 
while the native women, half clothed in tattered kangaroo-skins, 
came slouching past with an aspect of defiant wretchedness. 
Work is never done in West Australia unless under the compul- 
sion of the lash, for a similar degradation of labour is produced 
by the use of convicts as by that of slaves. 

Settled at an earlier date than was South Australia, West 
Australia, then called Swan River, although one of the oldest of 
the colonies, was so soon ruined by the free gift to the first 
settlers of vast territories useless without labour, that in 1849 
she petitioned to be made a penal settlement, and though at 
the instance of Victoria transportation to the Australias has 



CHAP. XIII.] TBANSP OR TA TIOF. 3 7 7 

now all but ceased, Freemantle prison is still the most consider- 
able convict establishment we possess across the seas. 

At the time of my visit, there were 10,000 convicts or eman- 
cipists within the " colony," of whom 1500 were in prison, 1500 
in private service on tickets-of-leave, while 1500 had served out 
their time, and over 5000 had been released upon conditional 
pardons. Six hundred of the convicts had arrived from England 
in 1865. Out of a total population, free and convict, of 20,000, 
the offenders in the year had numbered nearly 3500, or more 
than one-sixth of the people, counting women and children. 

If twenty years of convict labour seem to have done but little 
for the settlement, they have at least enabled us to draw the 
moral, that transportation and free immigration cannot exist 
side by side : the one element must overbear and destroy the 
other. In Western Australia, the convicts and their keepers 
form two-thirds of the whole population, and the district is a 
great English prison, not a colony, and exports but a little wool, 
a little sandal-wood, and a little cotton. 

Western Australia is as unpopular with the convicts as with 
free settlers : fifty or sixty convicts have successfully escaped 
from the settlement within the last few years. From twenty to 
thirty escapes take place annually, but the men are usually re- 
captured within a month or two, although sheltered by the 
people, the vast majority of whom are ticket-of-leave men or ex- 
convicts. Absconders receive a hundred lashes and one year in 
the chain-gang, yet from sixty to seventy unsuccessful attempts 
are reported every year. 

On the road between Albany and Hamilton I saw a man at 
work in ponderous irons. The sun was striking down on him 
in a way that none can fancy who have no experience of Western 
Australia or Bengal, and his labour was of the heaviest ; now he 
had to prise up huge rocks with a crowbar, now to handle pick 
and shovel, now to use the rammer, under the eye of an armed 
warder, who idled in the shade by the road-side. This was an 
" escape-man," thus treated with a view to cause him to cease 
his continual endeavours to get away from Albany. No wonder 
that the " chain-gang " system is a failure, and the number both 
of attempts and actual escapes larger under it than before the 
introduction of this tremendous punishment. 



11^ GItEATER BRITAIN. [chap, xiii. 

Many of the " escapes " are made with no other view than to 
obtain a momentary change of scene. Two convicts once put 
to sea from Port Arthur in an empty oil-cask. On the last 
return trip of the ship in which I sailed from Adelaide to King 
George's Sound, a convict coal-man was found built up in the 
coal-heap on deck ; he and his mates at Albany had drawn lots 
to settle which of them should be thus packed off by the help of 
the others " for a change." Of ultimate escape there could be 
no chance ; the coal on deck could not fail to be exhausted 
within a day or two after leaving port, and this they knew. 
When he emerged, black, half-smothered, and nearly starved, 
from his hiding-place, he allowed himself to be quietly ironed, 
and so kept till the ship reached Adelaide, when he was given 
up to the authorities, and sent back to Albany for punishment. 
Acts of this class are common enough to have received a name. 
The offenders are called "bolters for a change." 

A convict has been known, when marching in his gang, sud- 
denly to lift up his spade, and split the skull of the man who 
walked in front of him, thus courting a certain death for no 
reason but to escape from the monotony of toil. Another has 
doubled his punishment for fun by calling out to the magis- 
trates : " Gentlemen, pray remember that I am entitled to an 
iron-gang, because this is the second time of my absconding," 

One of the strangest things about the advance of England is 
the many-sided character of the form of early settlement : Central 
North America we plant with Mormons, New Zealand with the 
runaways of our whaling ships, Tasmania and portions of Aus- 
tralia with our transported felons. Transportation has gone 
through many phases since the system took its rise in the exile 
to the colonies, under Charles II., of the moss-troopers of North- 
umberland. The plan of forcing the exiles to labour as slaves 
on the plantations was introduced in the reign of George II., 
and by an Act then passed offenders were actually put up to 
auction, and knocked down to men who undertook to transport 
them, and make what they could of their labour. In 1786, an 
Order in Council named the eastern coast of Australia and the 
adjacent islands as the spot to which transportation beyond the 
seas should be directed, and in 1787 the black bar was drawn 
indelibly across the page of history which records the foundation 



C! I A P. xiii.] TEAN'SP OH TA TIOF. 3 79 

of the colony of New South Wales. From that time to the 
present day the world has witnessed the portentous sight of 
great countries in which the major portion of the people, the 
whole of the handicraftsmen, are convicted felons. 

There being no free people whatever in the " colonies " when 
first formed, the Governors had no choice but to appoint con- 
victs to all the official situations. The consequence was robbery 
and corruption. Recorded sentences were altered by the convict- 
clerks, free pardons and grants of land were sold for money. 
The convict overseers forced their gangmen to labour, not for 
Government, but for themselves, securing secrecy by the un- 
limited supply of rum to the men, who in turn bought native . 
women with all that they could spare. On the sheep-stations 
whole herds were stolen, and those from neighbouring lands 
driven in to show on muster-days. Enormous fortunes were 
accumulated by some of the emancipists, by fraud and infamy 
rather than by prudence, we are told ; and a vast number of 
convicts were soon at large in Sydney town itself, without the 
knowledge of the police. As the settlement waxed in years and 
size, the sons of convict parents grew up in total ignorance, 
while such few free settlers as arrived — " the ancients," as they 
were styled, or " the ancient nobility of Botany Bay " — were 
wholly dependent on convict tutors for the education of their 
children — the " corn-stalks " and " currency girls ;" and cock- 
fighting was the chief amusement of both sexes. The news- 
papers were without exception conducted by gentlemen convicts, 
or "specials," as they were called, who were assigned to the 
editors for that purpose, and the police force itself was composed 
of ticket-of-leave men and " emancipists." Convicts were thus 
the only schoolmasters, the only governesses, the only nurses, 
the only journalists, and, as there were even convict clergymen 
and convict university professors, the training of the youth 
of the land was committed almost exclusively to the felon's 
care. 

A petition sent home from Tasmania in 1848 is simple and 
pathetic ; it is from the parents and guardians resident in Van 
Diemen's Land. They Set forth that there are 13,000 children 
growing up in the colony, that within six years alone 24,000 
convicts have been turned into the island, and of these but 



38o GREATER BRITAIN. s[chap. xm. 

4000 women. The result is, that their children are brought up 
in the midst of profligacy and degradation. 

The lowest depth of villany, if in such universal infamy 
degrees can be conceived, was to be met with in the parties 
working in the "chain-gangs" on the roads. "Assignees" too 
bad even for the whip of the harshest, or the " beef and beer " 
of the most lenient master, brutalised still further, if that were 
possible, by association with those* as vile as themselves, and 
followed about the country by women too infamous even for 
service in the houses of the up-country settlers, or in the gin- 
palaces of the towns, worked in gangs upon the roads by day, 
whenever promises of spirits or the hope of tobacco could 
induce them to work at all, and found a compensation for such 
unusual toil in nightly quitting their camp, and traversing the 
country, robbing and murdering those they met, and sacking 
every homestead that lay in their track. 

The clerk in charge of one of the great convict barracks was 
himself a convict, and had an understanding with the men under 
his care that they might prowl about at night and rob, on con- 
dition that they should share their gains with him, and that, 
if they were found out, he should himself prosecute them for 
being absent without leave. Juries were composed either of 
convicts, or of publicans dependent on the convicts for their 
livelihood, and convictions were of necessity extremely rare. 
In a plain case of murder the judge was known to say, " If 
I don't attend to the recommendation to mercy, these fellows 
will never find a man guilty again;" and jurymen would fre- 
quently hand down notes to the counsel for the defence, and 
bid him give himself no trouble, as they intended to acquit 
their friend. 

The lawyers were mostly convicts, and perjury in the courts 
was rife. It has been given in evidence before a Royal Com- 
mission by a magistrate of New South Wales, that a Sydney 
free immigrant once had a tailor's bill sent in which he did not 
owe, he having been but a few weeks in the colony. He in- 
structed a lawyer, and did not himself appear in court. He 
afterwards heard that he had won his case, for the tailor had 
sworn to the bill, but the immigrant's lawyer, " to save trouble," 
had called a witness who swore to having paid it, which settled 



CHAP. XIII.] TEANSPORTATION. 381 

the case. Sometimes there were not only convict witnesses and 
convict jurors, but convict judges. 

The assignment system was supposed to be a great improve- 
ment upon the gaol, but its only certain result was that convict 
master and convict man used to get drunk together, while a 
night never passed without a burglary in Sydney. Many of the 
convicts' mistresses went out from England as Government free 
emigrants, taking with them funds subscribed by the thieves at 
home and money obtained by the robberies for which their 
" fancy men " had been convicted, and on their arrival at Sydney 
succeeded in getting their paramours assigned to them as con- 
vict servants. Such was the disparity of the sexes that the term 
"wife" was a mockery, and the Female Emigration Society and 
the Government vied with each other in sending out to Sydney 
the worst women in all London, to reinforce the ranks of the 
convict girls of the Paramatta factory. Even among the free 
settlers, marriage soon became extremely rare. Convicts were 
at the head of the colleges and benevolent asylums ; the custom- 
house officials were all convicts ; one of the occupants of the 
office of Attorney-General took for his clerk a notorious convict, 
who was actually re-committed to Bathurst after his appoint- 
ment, and yet allowed to return to Sydney and resume his 
duties. 

The most remarkable peculiarity of the assignment system 
was its gross uncertainty. Some assigned convicts spent their 
time working for high wages, living and drinking with their 
masters; others were mere slaves. Whether, however, he be in 
practice well or ill treated, in the assignment or apprenticeship 
system the convict is, under whatever name, a slave, subject to 
the caprice of a master who, though he cannot himself flog his 
" servant," can have him flogged by writing a note or sending 
his compliments to his neighbour the magistrate on the next run 
or farm. The "whipping-houses " of Mississippi and Alabama 
had their parallel in New South Wales ; a look or word would 
cause the hurrying of the servant to the post or the forge as a 
preliminary to a month in the chain-gang " on the roads." On 
the other hand, under the assignment system nothing can pre- 
vent skilled convict workmen being paid and pampered by their 
masters, whose interest it evidently becomes to get out of them 



3 8 2 GEE A TEH BRI TA IN. [chap, xiii. 

all the work possible, by excessive indulgence, as intelligent 
labour cannot be produced through the machinery of the whip- 
ping-post, but may be through that of " beef and beer." 

Whatever may have been the true interest of the free settlers, 
cruelty was in practice commoner than indulgence. Fifty and 
a hundred lashes, months of solitary confinement, years of 
labour in chains on the roads, were laid upon convicts for such 
petty offences as brawling, drunkenness and disobedience. In 
1835, among the 28,000 convicts then in New South Wales, 
there were 22,000 summary convictions for disorderly or dis^ 
honest conduct, and in a year the average was 3000 floggings, 
and above 100,000 lashes. In Tasmania, where the convicts 
then numbered 15,000, the summary convictions were 15,000 
and the lashes 50,000 a year. 

The criminal returns of Tasmania and New South Wales 
contain the condemnation of the transportation system. In the 
single year of 1834, one-seventh of the free population of Van 
Diemen's Land were summarily convicted of drunkenness. In 
that year, in a population of 37,000, 15,000 were convicted 
before the courts for various offences. Over a hundred persons 
a year were at that time sentenced to death in New South 
Wales alone. Less than a fourth of the convicts served their 
time without incurring additional punishment from the police, 
but those who thus escaped proved in after-life the worst of all, 
and even Government officials were forced into admitting that 
transportation demoralized far more persons than it reformed. 
Hundreds of assigned convicts made their escape to the back 
country, and became bushrangers; many got down to the 
coast, and crossed to the Pacific islands, whence they spread 
the infamies of New South Wales throughout all Polynesia. A 
Select Committee of the House of Commons reported, in words 
characteristic of our race, that these convicts committed, in 
New Zealand and the Pacific, " outrages at which humanity 
shudders," and which were to be deplored as being " injurious 
to our commercial interests in that quarter of the globe." 

Transportation to New South Wales came to its end none 
too soon: in fifty years 75,000 convicts had been transported 
to that colony, and 30,000 to the Uttle island of Tasmania in 
twenty years. 



CHAP. XIII.] TRANSPORTATION. 383 

Were there no other argument for the discontinuance of 
transportation, it would be almost enough to say that the life 
in the convict-ship itself makes the reformation of transported 
criminals impossible. Where many bad men are brought toge- 
ther, the few not wholly corrupt who may be among them have 
no opportunity for speech, and the grain of good that may 
exist in every heart can have no chance for life ; if not inclina- 
tion, pride at least leads the " old hand " to put down all acts 
that are not vile, all words that are not obscene. Those who 
have sailed in convict company say that there is something 
terrible in the fiendish delight that the " old hands " take in 
watching the steady degradation of the " new chums." The 
hardened criminals invariably meet the less vile with outrage, 
ridicule, and contempt, and the better men soon succumb to 
ruffians who have crime for their profession, and for all their 
relcLxation vice. 

To describe the horrors of the convict-ships, we are told, 
would be impossible. The imagination will scarce suffice to 
call up dreams so hideous. Four months of filthiness in a 
floating hell sink even the least bad to the level of unteachable 
brutality. Mutiny is unknown ; the convicts are their own 
masters and the ship's, but the shrewd callousness of the old 
gaol-bird teaches all that there is nothing to be gained even by 
momentary success. Rage and violence are seldom seen, but 
there is a humour that is worse than blows — conversation that 
transcends all crime in infamy. 

It will be long before the last traces of convict disease dis- 
appear from Tasmania and New South Wales ; the gold-find 
has done much to purify the air, free selection may lead to a 
still more bright advance, manufacturing may lend its help ; 
but years must go by before Tasmania can be prosperous or 
Sydney moral. Their history is not only valuable as a guide 
to those who have to save West Australia, as General Eourke 
and Mr. Wentworth saved New South Wales, but as an example, 
not picked from ancient rolls, but from the records of a system 
founded within the memory of living man, and still existent, 
of what transportation must necessarily be, and what it may 
easily become. 

The results of a dispassionate survey of the transportation 



384 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiii. 

system in the abstract are far from satisfactory. If deporta- 
tion be considered as a punishment, it would be hard to find 
a worse. Punishment should be equable, reformatory, deter- 
rent, cheap. Transportation is the most costly of all the 
punishments that are known to us ; it is subject to variations 
that cannot be guarded against; it is severest to the least 
guilty and slightest to the most hardened ; it morally destroys 
those who have some good remaining in them ; it leaves the 
ruffianly malefactor worse if possible than it finds him ; and, 
while it is frightfully cruel and vindictive in its character, it 
is useless as a deterrent because its nature is unknown at 
home. Transportation to the English thief means exile, and 
nothing more ; it is only after conviction, when far away from 
his uncaught associates, that he comes to find it worse than 
death. Instead of deterring, transportation tempts to crime; 
instead of reforming, it debases the bad, and confirms* in 
villany the already infamous. To every bad man it gives 
the worst companions ; the infamous are to be reformed by 
association with the vile ; while its eftects upon the colonies 
are described in every petition of the settlers, and testified 
to by the whole history of our plantations in the antipodes, 
and by the present condition of West Austrafia. We have 
come at last to transportation in its most limited and re- 
stricted sense ; the only remaining step is to be quit of it 
altogether. 

In conjunction with all punishment, we should secure some 
means of separating the men one from another as soon as 
the actual punishment is terminated : to settle them on land, to 
settle them with wives, where possible, should be our object. The 
work which really has in it something of reformation is that 
which a man has to do, not in order that he may avoid whip- 
ping, but that he may escape starvation ; and it is from this 
point of view that transportation is defensible. A man, however 
bad, will generally become a useful member of society and a not 
altogether neglectful father if allowed to settle upon land away 
from his old companions ; but morbid tendencies of every kind 
are strengthened by close association with others who are labour- 
ing under a like infirmity : and where the former convicts are 
allowed to hang together in towns, nothing is to be expected 



CHAP. XIII.] TRANSPORTATION. 385 

better than that which is actually found — namely, a state of 
- society where wives speedily become as villanous as their hus- 
bands, and where children are brought up to emulate their fathers' 
crimes. 

To keep the men separate from each other, after the expira- 
tion of the sentence, we need to send the convicts to a fairly 
populous country, whence arises this great difficulty : if we 
send convicts to a populous colony, we are met at once by a cry- 
that we are forcing the workmen of the colony into a one-sided 
competition ; that we are offering an unbearable insult to the 
free population ; that, in attempting to reform the felon, by 
allowing him to be absorbed into the colonial society, we are 
degrading and corrupting the whole community on the chance 
of possible benefit to our English villain. On the other hand, 
if we send our convicts to an uninhabited land, such as New 
South Wales and Tasmania were, such as West Australia is 
now, we build up an artificial Pandemonium, whither we convey 
at the public cost the pick and cream of the rufiians of the 
world, to form a community of which each member must be 
sufficiently vile of himself to corrupt a nation. 

If by care the difficulty of which I have spoken can be 
avoided, transportation might be replaced by short sentences^ 
solitary confinement, and low diet, to be followed by forced 
exile, under regulations, to some selected colony, such as the 
Ghauts of Eastern Africa, opposite to Madagascar, or the high- 
lands that skirt the Zambesi River. Exile after punishment 
may often be the only way of providing for convicts who would 
otherwise be forced to return to their former ways. The diffi- 
culties in the path of discharged convicts seeking employment 
are too terrible for them not to accept joyfully a plan for emi- 
gration to a country where they are unknown. 

In Western Australia transportation has not been made sub- 
servient to colonization, and both in consequence have failed. 

On going on board the Bombay at King George's Sound, I 
at once found myself in the East. The captain's crew of 
Malays, the native cooks in long white gowns, the Bombay 
serangs in dark blue turbans, red cummerbunds, and green or 
yellow trousers ; the negro or Abyssinian stokers ; the pas- 
sengers in coats of China-grass; the Hindoo deck-sweepers 

2 c 



Hi 



386 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiii. 

playing on their tom-toms in the intervals of work ; the punkahs 
below ; the Hindostanee names for everything on deck ; and, 
above all, the general indolence of everybody, all told of a new 
world. 

A convict clerk superintended the coaling, which took place 
before we left the harbour for Ceylon, and I remarked that the 
dejection of his countenance exceeded that of the felon- 
labourers who worked in irons on the quay. There is a wide- 
spread belief in England that unfair favour is shown to " gentle- 
men convicts." This is simply not the case ; every educated 
prisoner is employed at in-door work, for which he is suited, and 
not at road-making, in which he might be useless ; but there 
are few cases in which he would not wish to exchange a 
position full of hopeless degradation for that of an out-door 
labourer, who passes through his daily routine drudgery (far 
from the prison) unknown, and perhaps in his fancy all but 
free. The longing to change the mattock for the pen is the 
result of envy, and confined to those who, if listened to, would 
prove incapable of pursuing the pen-driver's occupation. 

Under a fair and freshening breeze, we left the port of 
Albany, happy to escape from a gaol the size of India, even 
those of us who had been forced to pass only a few days in 
West Australia. 



387 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Australia. 

Pacing the deck ^vith difficulty, as the ship tore through the 
lava-coloured seas, before a favouring gale that caught us off 
Cape Lewin, some of us discussed the prospects of the great 
Southland as a whole. 

In Australia, it is often said, we have a second America in 
its infancy ; but it may be doubted whether we have not become 
so used to trace the march of empire on a westward course, 
through Persia and Assyria^ Greece and Rome, then by Germany 
to England and America, that we are too readily prepared to 
accept the probability of its onward course to the Pacific. 

The progress of Australia has been singularly rapid. In 
1830, her population was under 40,000 ; in i860, it numbered 
1,500,000 ; nevertheless, it is questionable hov\^ far the progress 
will continue. The natural conditions of America in Australia 
are exactly reversed. All the best lands of Australia are on 
her coast, and these are already taken up by settlers. Australia 
has three-quarters the area of Europe, but it is doubtful whether 
she will ever support a dense population throughout even half 
her limits. The uses of the northern territory have yet to be 
discovered, and the interior of the continent is far from being 
tempting to the settler. Upon the whole, it seems likely that 
almost all the imperfectly-known regions of Australia . will in 
time be occupied by pastoral Crown tenants, but that the area 
of agricultural operations is not likely to admit of indefinite 
extension. The central district of Australia, to the extent, 
perhaps, of half the entire continent, lies too far north for 
winter rains, too far south for tropical wet seasons, and in these 
vast solitudes agriculture may be pronounced impossible, sheep- 

2 c 2 



388 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiv. 

farming difficult. There will be no difficulty in retaining in 
tanks, or raising by means of wells, sufficient water for sheep 
and cattle-stations, and the wool, tallow, and even meat, will be 
carried by those railways for which the country is admirably 
fitted, while the construction of locks upon the Murray and its 
tributaries will enable steamers to carry the whole trade of the 
Riverina. So far, all is well ; but the arable lands of Australia 
are limited by the rains, and apparently the limit is a sadly 
narrow one. 

Once in a while, a heavy winter rain falls in the interior ; 
grass springs up, the lagoons are filled, the up-country squatters 
make their fortunes, and all goes prosperously for a time. 
Accounts reach the coast cities of the astonishing fertility of 
the interior, and hundreds of settlers set off to the remotest 
districts. Two or three years of drought then follow, and all 
the more enterprising squatters are soon ruined, with a gain, 
however, sometimes of a few thousand square miles of country 
to civilization. 

Hitherto the Australians have not made so much as they 
should have done of the country that is within their reach. 
The want of railroads is incredible. There are but some 400 
miles of railway in all Australia — far less than the amount pos- 
sessed by the single infant state of Wisconsin. The sums spent 
upon the Victorian lines have deterred the colonists from com- 
pleting their railway system. Ten million pounds sterling were 
spent upon 200 miles of road, through easy country in which 
the land cost nothing. The United States have made nearly 
40,000 miles of railroad for less than ;^3oo,ooo,ooo sterling; 
Canada made her 2000 miles for ^20,000,000, or ten times as 
much railroad as Victoria for only twice the money. Cuba has 
already more miles of railroad than all Australia. 

Small as are the inhabited portions of Australia when com- 
pared with the corresponding divisions of the United States, 
this country nevertheless is huge enough. The part of Queens- 
land already peopled is five times larger than the United 
Kingdom. South Australia and West Australia are each of 
them nearly as large as British India, but of these colonies the 
greater part is desert. Fertile Victoria, the size of Great 
Britain, is only a thirty-fourth part of Australia. 



CHAP. XIV.] AUSTRALIA. 389 

In face of the comparatively small amount of good agricul- 
tural country known to exist in Australia, the disproportionate 
size of the great cities shows out more clearly than ever. Even 
Melbourne, when it comes to be examined, has too much the 
air of a magnified Hobarton, of a city with no country at its 
back, of a steam-hammer set up to crack nuts. Queensland 
is at present free from the burthen of gigantic cities, but then 
Queensland- is subject to the greater danger of becoming what 
is in reality a slave republic. 

Morally and intellectually, at all events, the colonies are 
thriving. A literature is springing up, a national character is 
being grafted upon the good English stock. What shape the 
Australian mind will take is at present somewhat doubtful. In 
addition to considerable shrewdness and a purely Saxon capa- 
city and willingness to combine for local objects, we find in 
Australia an admirable love of simple mirth, and a serious 
distaste for prolonged labour in one direction ; while the down- 
rightness and determination in the pursuit of truth, remarkable 
in America, are less noticeable here. 

The extravagance begotten of the tradition of convict times 
has not been without effect, and the settlers waste annually, it 
is computed, food which would support in Europe a population 
of twice their numbers. This wastefulness is, however, in some 
degree a consequence of the necessary habits of a pastoral 
people. The 8000 tons of tallow exported annually by the 
Australias are said to represent the boiling down of sheep 
enough to feed half a million of people for a twelvemonth. 

Australian manners, like the American, resemble the French 
rather than the British — a resemblance traceable, perhaps, to 
the essential democracy of Australia, America, and France. 
One surface point which catches the eye in any Australian ball- 
room, or on any racecourse, is clearly to be referred to the 
habit of mind produced by democracy — the fact, namely, that 
the women dress with great expense and care, the men with 
none whatever. This, as a rule, is true of Americans, Austra- 
lians, and French. 

Unlike as are the Australians to the British, there is never- 
theless a singular mimicry of British forms and ceremonies in 
the colonies, which is extended to the most trifling details of 



39C GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiv. 

public life. Twice in Australia was I invited to ministerial 
dinners, given to mark the approaching close of the session ; 
twice also was I present at university celebrations, in which 
home whimsicalities were closely copied. The Governors' 
messages to the Colonial Parliaments are travesties of those 
which custom in England leads us to call the " Queen's." The 
very phraseology is closely followed. We find Sir J. Manners 
Sutton gravely saying : " The representatives of the Govern- 
ment of New South Wales and of my Government have agreed 
to an arrangement on the border duties . . ." The "my" in 
a democratic country like Victoria strikes a stranger as pre- 
eminently incongruous, if not absurd. 

The imitation of Cambridge forms by the University of 
Sydney is singularly close. One almost expects to see the 
familiar blue gown of the "bull-dog" thrown across the arm of 
the first college servant met within its precincts. Chancellor, 
Vice-chancellor, Senate, Syndicates, and even Proctors, all are 
here in the antipodes. Registrar, professors, " seniors," fees, 
fines, and " petitions with the University seal attached ;" 
" Board of Classical Studies " — the whole corporation sits in 
borrowed plumage ; the very names of the colleges are being 
imitated : we find already a St. John's. The Calendar reads 
like a parody on the volume issued every March by Messrs. 
Deighton. Rules upon matriculation, upon the granting of 
testaimirs ; prize-books stamped with college arms are named, 
ad eundeni degrees are known, and we have imitations of 
phraseology even in the announcement of prizes to " the most 
distinguished candidates for honours in each of the aforesaid 
schools," and in the list of subjects for the Moral Science 
tripos. Lent Term, Trinity Term, Michaelmas Term, take the 
place of the Spring, Summer, and Fall Terms of the less pre- 
tentious institutions in America, and the height of absurdity is 
reached in the regulations upon " academic costume," and on 
the " respectful salutation " by undergraduates of the " fellows 
and professors " of the University. The situation on a hot- 
wind day of a member of the Senate, in " black silk gown, with 
hood of scarlet cloth edged with white fur, and lined with blue 
silk, black velvet trencher cap," all in addition to his ordinary 
clothing, it is to be presumed, can be imagined only by those 



CHAP. XIV.] AUSTRALIA. 391 

who know Avhat hot winds are. We Enghsh are great acdi- 
matisers : we have carried trial by jury to Bengal, tenant-right 
to Oude, and caps and gowns to be worn over loongee and 
paejania at Calcutta University. Who are we, that we should 
cry out against the French for " carrying France about with 
them everywhere?" 

The objects of the founders are set forth in the charter as 
"the advancement of religion and morality, and the promotion 
of useful knowledge /' but as there is no theological faculty, no 
religious test or exercise whatever, the philosophy of the first 
portion of the phrase is not easily understood. 

In no Western institutions is the radicalism of Western 
thought so thoroughly revealed as in the Universities ; in no 
English colonial institutions is Conservatism so manifest. The 
contrast between Michigan and Sydney is far more striking 
than that between Harvard and old Cambridge. 

Of the religious position of Australia there is little to be 
said : the Wesleyans, Catholics, and Presbyterians are stronger, 
and the other denominations weaker, than they are at home. 
The general mingling of incongruous objects and of conflicting 
races, characteristic of colonial life, extends to religious build- 
ings. The graceful Wesleyan church, the Chinese joss-house, 
and the Catholic cathedral stand not far apart in Melbourne. 
In Australia, the mixture of blood is not yet great. In South 
Australia, w^here it is most complete, the Catholics and Wes- 
leyans have considerable strength. Anglicanism is naturally 
strongest where the race is most exclusively British — in Tas- 
mania and New South Wales. 

As far as the coast tracts are concerned, Australia, as will be 
seen from what has been said of the individual colonies, is 
rapidly ceasing to be a land of great tenancies, and becoming 
a land of small freeholds, each cultivated by its owner. It 
need hardly be pointed out that, in the interests of the country 
and of the race, this is a happy change. When English rural 
labourers commence to fully realize the misery of their position, 
they will find not only America, but Australia also, open to 
them as a refuge and future home. Looming in the distance, 
we still, however, see the American problem of whether the 
Englishman can live out of England. Can he thrive except 



392 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xw. 

where mist and damp preserve the juices of his frame ? He 
comes from the fogs of the BaUic shores, and from the Flemish 
lowlands ; gains in vigour in the south island of New Zealand. 
In Australia and America — hot and dry — the type has already 
changed. Will it eventually disappear ? 

It is still an open question whether the change of type 
among the English in America and Australia is a climatic 
adaptation on the part of nature, or a temporary divergence 
produced by abnormal causes, and capable of being modified 
by care. 

Before we had done our talk, the ship was pooped by a 
green- sea, which, curling in over her tafifrail, swept her decks 
from end to end, and our helmsmen, although regular old 
" hard-a-weather " fellows, had difficulty in keeping her upon 
her course. It was the last of the gale, and when we made up 
our beds upon the skylights, the heavens were clear of scud, 
though the moon was still craped with a ceaseless roll of cloud. 



393 



CHAPTER XV. 

Colonies. 

When a Briton takes a survey of the colonies, he finds .much 
matter for surprise in the one-sided nature of the partnership 
which exists between the mother and the daughter lands. No 
reason presents itself to him why our artisans and merchants 
should be taxed in aid of populations far more wealthy than 
our own, who have not, as we have, millions of paupers to 
support. We at present tax our humblest classes, we weaken 
our defences, we scatter our troops and fleets, and lay our- 
selves open to panics such as those of 1853 and 1859, in order 
to protect against imaginary dangers the Australian gold-digger 
and Canadian farmer. There is something ludicrous in the 
idea of taxing St. Giles's for the support of Melbourne, and 
making Dorsetshire agricultural labourers pay the cost of 
defending New Zealand colonists in Maori wars. 

It is possible that the belief obtains in Britain among the 
least educated classes of the community that colonial expenses 
are rapidly decreasing, if they have not already wholly dis- 
appeared ; but in fact they have for some years past been 
steadily and continuously growing in amount. 

As long as we choose to keep up such propiignacida as 
Gibraltar, Malta, and Bermuda, we must pay roundly for them, 
as we also must for such costly luxuries as our Gold Coast 
settlements for the suppression of the slave-trade; but if we 
confine the term " colonies " to English-speaking, white-in- 
habited, and self-governed lands, and exclude on the one hand 
garrisons such as Gibraltar, and on the other mere dependen- 
cies like the West Indies and Ceylon, we find that our true 
colonies in North America, Australia, Polynesia, and South 



394 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xv. 

Africa, involve us nominally in yearly charges of almost two 
millions sterling, and, really, in untold expenditure. 

Canada is in all ways the most flagrant case. She draws 
from us som^e three millions annually for her defence, she makes 
no contribution towards the cost ; she relies mainly on us to 
defend a frontier of 4000 miles, and she excludes our goods by 
prohibitive duties at her ports. In short, colonial expenses 
which, rightly or wrongly, our fathers bore (and that not un- 
grudgingly) when they enjoyed a monopoly of colonial trade, 
are borne by us in face of colonial prohibition. What the true 
cost to us of Canada may be is unfortunately an open question, 
and the loss by the weakening of our home forces we have no 
means of computing ; but when we consider that, on a fair 
statement of the case, Canada would be debited with the cost 
of a large portion of the half-pay and recruiting services, of 
Horse Quards and War Office expenses, of arms, accoutre- 
ments, barracks, hospitals, and stores, and also with the gigantic 
expenses of two of our naval squadrons, we cannot but admit 
that we must pay at least three millions a year for the hatred 
that the Canadians profess to bear towards the United States. 
Whatever may be the case, however, with regard to Canada, 
less fault is to be found with the cost of the Australian colonies. 
If they bore a portion of the half-pay and recruiting expenses 
as well as the cost of the troops actually employed among them 
in time of peace, and also paid their share in the maintenance 
of the British navy, — a share to increase with the increase of 
their merchant shipping — there would be little to desire, unless, 
indeed, we should wish that, in exchange for a check upon im- 
perial braggadocio and imperial waste, the Australias should also 
contribute towards the expenses of imperial wars. 

No reason can be shown for our spending millions on the 
defence of Canada against the Americans or in aiding the New 
Zealand colonists against the Maories that will not apply to 
their aiding us in case of a European war with France, control 
being given to their representatives over our public action in 
questions of imperial concern. Without any such control over 
imperial action, the old American colonists were well content to 
do their share of fighting in imperial wars. In 1689, in 1702, 
and in 1744, Massachusetts attacked the French, and taking 



CHAP. X7.] COLONIES. 395 

from them Nova Scotia and others of their new plantations, 
handed them over to Great Britain. Even when the tax time 
came, Massachusetts, while declaring that the English Parlia- 
ment had no right to tax colonies, went on to say that the king 
could inform them of the exigencies of the public service, and 
that they were ready "to provide for them if required." 

It is not likely, however, nowadays, that our colonists would, 
for any long stretch of time, engage to aid us in our purely 
European wars. Australia would scarcely feel herself deeply 
interested in the guarantee of Luxemburg, nor Canada in the 
affairs of Servia. The fact that we in Britain paid our share — 
or rather nearly the whole cost — of the Maori wars would be 
no argument to an Australian, but only an additional proof to 
him of our extraordinary folly. We have been educated into a 
habit of paying with complacency other people's bills — not so 
the Australian settler. 

As far as Australia is concerned, our soldiers are not used as 
troops at all. The colonists like the show of the red-coats, and 
the military duties are made up partly of guard-of-honour work, 
and partly of the labours of police. The colonists well know 
that in time of war we should immediately withdraw our troops, 
and they trust wholly in their volunteers and the colonial 
marine. 

So long as we choose to allow the system to continue, the 
colonists are well content to reap the benefit. When we at last 
decide that it shall cease, they will reluctantly consent. It is 
more than doubtful whether, if we were to insist to the utmost 
upon our rights as towards our Southern colonies, they would 
do more than grumble and consent to our demands ; and there 
is no chance whatever of our asking for more than our simple 
due. 

When you talk to an intelligent Australian, you can always 
see that he fears that separation would be made the excuse for 
the equipment of a great and costly Australian fleet — not more 
necessary then than now — and that, however he may talk, he 
would, rather than separate from England, at least do his duty 
by her. 

The fear of conquest of the Australian colonies if we left 
them to themselves is on the face of it ridiculous. It is suffi- 



396 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xv. 

cient, perhaps, to say that the old American colonies, when 
they had but a million and a half of people, defended them- 
selves successfully against the then all-powerful French, and 
that there is no instance of a self-protected English colony 
being conquered by the foreigner. The American colonies 
valued so highly their independence of the old country in the 
matter of defence that they petitioned the Crown to be allowed 
to fight for themselves, and called the British army by the plain 
name of "grievance." 

As for our so-called defence of the colonies, in war-time we 
defend ourselves : we defend the colonies only during peace. 
In war-time they are ever left to shift for themselves, and they 
would undoubtedly be better fit to do so were they in the habit 
of maintaining their military establishments in time of peace. 
The present system weakens us and them — us, by taxes and by 
the withdrawal of our men and ships ; the colonies, by prevent- 
ing the development of that self-reliance which is requisite to 
form a nation's greatness. The successful encountering • of 
difficulties is the marking feature of the national character of 
the English, and we can hardly expect a nation which has never 
encountered any, or which has been content to see them met 
by others, ever to become great. In short, as matters now 
stand, the colonies are a source of military weakness to us, and 
our "protection " of them is a source of danger to the colonists. 
No doubt, there are still among us, men who would have wished 
to have seen America continue in union with England, on the 
principle on which the Russian conscripts are chained each to 
an old man — to keep her from going too fast — and who now 
consider it our duty to defend our colonies at whatever cost, on 
account of the " prestige " which attaches to the somewhat pre- 
carious tenure of these great lands. With such men it is im- 
possible for colonial reformers to argue : the standpoints are 
wholly different. To those, however, who admit the injustice 
of the present system to the taxpayers of the mother-country, 
but who fear that her merchants would suffer by its disturbance, 
inasmuch as, in their belief, action on our part would lead to a 
disruption of the tie, we may plead that, even should separation 
be the result, we should be none the worse off for its occur- 
rence. The retention of colonies at almost any cost has been 



CHAP. XV.] COLONIES. 397 

defended — so far as it has been supported by argument at all 
— on the ground that the connexion conduces to trade, to 
which argument it is sufficient to answer that no one has ever 
succeeded in showing what effect upon trade the connexion 
can have, and that as excellent examples to the contrary we 
have the fact that our trade with the Ionian Islands has in- 
creased since their annexation to the kingdom of Greece, and 
a much more striking fact than even this — namely, that while 
the trade with England of the Canadian Confederation is only 
four-elevenths of its total external trade, or httle more than 
one-third, the English trade of the United States was in i860 
(before the war) nearly two-thirds of their total external trade, 
in 1 86 1 more than two-thirds, and in 1866 (first year after the 
war) again four-sevenths of the total trade. Common institu- 
tions, common freedom, and common tongue have evidently far 
more to do with trade than union has ; and for purposes of com- 
merce and civilization, America is a truer colony of Britain than 
is Canada. 

It would not be difficult, were it necessary, to multiply ex- 
amples whereby to prove that trade with a country does not 
appear to be affected by union with or separation from it. 
Egypt (even when we carefully exclude from the returns Indian 
produce in transport) sends us nearly all such produce as she 
exports, notwithstanding that the French largely control the 
government, and that we have much less footing in the country 
than the Italians, and no more than the Austrians or Spanish. 
Our trade with Australia means that the Australians want some- 
thing of us and that w^e need something of them, and that we 
exchange with them our produce as we do in a larger degree 
mth the Americans, the Germans, and the French. 

The trade argument being met, and it being remembered 
that our colonies are no more an outlet for our surplus popula- 
tion than they would be if the Great Mogul ruled over them, as 
is seen by the fact that of every twenty people who leave the 
United Kingdom, one goes to Canada, two to Australia, and 
sixteen to the United States, we come to the "argument" which 
consists in the word "prestige." When examined, this ciy seems 
to mean that, in the opinion of the utterer, extent of empire is 
power — a doctrine under which Brazil ought to be nineteen and 



39 B GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, x v. 

a half times, and China twenty-six times as powerful as France. 
Perhaps the best answer to the doctrine is a simple contradic- 
tion : those who have read history with most care well know 
that at all times extent of empire has been weakness. England's 
real empire was small enough in 1650, yet it is rather doubtful 
whether her " prestige " ever reached the height it did while the 
Cromwellian admirals swept the seas. The idea conveyed by 
the words " mother of free nations " is every bit as good as that 
contained in the cry " prestige," and the argumient that, as the 
colonists are British subjects, we have no right to cast them 
adrift so long as they wish to continue citizens, is evidently no 
ansv/er to those who merely urge that the colonists should pay 
their own policemen. 

It may, perhaps, be contended that the possession of 
" colonies" tends to preserve us from the curse of small island 
countries, the dwarfing of mind which would otherwise make us 
Guernsey a little magnified. If this be true, it is a powerful 
argument in favour of continuance in the present system. It 
is a question, however, whether our real preservation from the 
insularity we deprecate is not to be found in the possession of 
true colonies — of plantations such as America, in short — rather 
than in that of mere dependencies. That which raises us above 
the provincialism of citizenship of little England is our citizen- 
ship of the greater Saxondom which includes all that is best and 
wisest in the world. 

From the foundation, separation would be harmless, does not 
of necessity follow the conclusion, separation is to be desired. 
This much only is clear — that we need not hesitate to demand 
that Australia should do her duty. 

With the more enlightened thinkers of England, separation 
from the colonies has for many years been a favourite idea, but 
as regards the Australias it would hardly be advisable. If we 
allow that it is to the interest both of our race and of the world 
that the Australias should prosper, we have to ask whether they 
would do so in a higher degree if separated from the mother 
country than if they remained connected with her and with 
each other by a federation. It has often been said that, instead 
of the varying relations which now exist between Britain and 
America, we should have seen a perfect friendship had we but 



CHAP. XV.] COLONIES. 399 

permitted the American colonies to go their way in peace ; but 
the example does not hold in the case of Australia, which is by 
no means wishful to go at all. 

Under separation we should, perhaps, find the colonies better 
emigration-fields for our surplus population than they are at 
present. Many of our emigrants who flock to the United States 
are attracted by the idea that they are going to become citizens 
of a new nation instead of dependents upon an old one. On 
the separation of Australia from England we might expect that 
a portion of these sentimentalists would be diverted from a 
colony necessarily jealous of us so long as we hold Canada, to 
one which from accordance of interests is likely to continue 
friendly or allied. This argument, however, would have no 
weight with those who desire the independence of Canada, and 
who look upon America as still our colony. 

Separation, we may then conclude, though infinitely better 
than a continuance of the existing one-sided tie, would, in a 
healthier state of our relations, not be to the interest of Britain, 
although it would perhaps be morally beneficial to Australia. 
Any relation, however, would be preferable to the existing one 
of mutual indifference and distrust. Recognising the fact that 
Australia has come of age, and calling on her, too, to recognise 
it, we should say to the Australian colonists : " Our present 
system cannot continue ; will you amend it, or separate ?" The 
worst thing that can happen to us is that we should " drift " 
blindly into separation. 

After all, the strongest of the arguments in favour of separa- 
tion is the somewhat paradoxical one that it would bring us a 
step nearer to the virtual confederation of the English race. 



PART IV. 

INDIA. 



2 D 



A REGULAR and uniform system of spelling of native names 
and other words has lately been brought into common use in 
India, and adopted by the Government. Not without hesita- 
tion I have decided upon ignoring this improvement, and con- 
fining myself to spellings known to and used by the English in 
England, for whom especially I am writing. 

I am aware that there is no system in the spelling, and that 
it is scientifically absurd ; nevertheless, the new Government 
spelling is not yet sufficiently well understood in England to 
warrant its use in a book intended for general circulation. 
The scientific spelling is not always an improvement to the 
eye, moreover : Talookdars of Oude may not be right, but it is 
a neater phrase than " Taalulehdars of Awdh ;" and it will 
probably be long before we in England write " kuli " for coolie, 
or adopt the spelling " Tata hordes." 



403 



CHAPTER I. 

Maritime Ceylon. 

We failed to sight the Island of Cocoas, a territory where John 
Ross is king — a worthy Scotchman, who having settled down 
in mid-ocean, some hundreds of miles from any port, proceeded 
to annex himself to Java and the Dutch. On being remon- 
strated with, he was made to see his error ; and, being 
appointed governor of and consul to himself and labourers, 
now hoists the union-jack, while his island has a red line drawn 
under its name upon the map. Two days after quitting John 
Ross's latitudes, we crossed the line in the heavy noonday of 
the equatorial belt of calms. The sun itself passed the equator 
the same day ; so, after having left Australia at the end of 
autumn, I suddenly found myself in Asia in the early spring. 
Mist obscured the skies except at dawn and sunset, when there 
was a clear air, in which floated cirro-cumuli with flat bases — 
clouds cut in half, as it seemed — and we were all convinced 
that Homer must have seen the Indian Ocean, so completely 
did the sea in the equatorial belt realize his epithet " purple " 
or "wine-dark." All day long the flying flsh — "those good 
and excellent creatures of God," as Drake styled them — were 
skimming over the water on every side. The Elizabethan 
captain, who knew their delicacy of taste, attributed their free- 
dom from the usual slime of fish, and their wholesome nature, 
to " their continued exercise in both air and water." The 
heat was great, and I made the discovery that Australians as 
well as Americans can put their feet above their heads. It 
may be asserted that the height above the deck of the feet of 
passengers on board ocean steamers varies directly as the heat, 
and inversely as the number of hours before dinner. 

In the afternoon of the day we crossed the line, we sighted a 
large East Indiaman lying right in our course, and so little way 

2 D 2 



404 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. i. 

was she making that, on coming up with her, we had to port 
our hehn, in order not to run her down. She hailed us, and 
we lay-to while she sent a boat aboard us with her mail ; for 
although she was already a month out from Calcutta and 
bound for London, our letters would reach home before she 
was round the Cape — a singular commentary upon the use of 
sailing ships in the Indian seas. Before the boat had left our 
side, the ships had floated so close together, through attraction, 
that we had to make several revolutions with the screw in order 
to prevent collision. 

When we, who were all sleeping upon deck, were aroused by 
the customary growl from the European quartermaster of 
" Four o'clock, sir ! Going to swab decks, sir ! Get up, sir !" 
given with the flare of the lantern in our eyes, we were still 
more than a hundred miles from Galle ; but before the sun had 
risen, we caught sight of Adam's Peak, a purple mass upon the 
northern sky, and soon we were racing with a French steamer 
from Saigon, and with a number of white-sailed native craft 
from the Maldives. Within a few hours, we were at anchor in 
a small bay, surrounded with lofty cocoa palms, in which were 
lying, tossed by a rolling swell, some dozen huge steamers, 
yard-arm to yard-arm — the harbour of Point de Galle. Every 
ship was flying her ensign, and in the damp hot air the old 
tattered union-jacks seemed brilliant crimson, and the dull 
green of the cocoa palms became a dazzling emerald. The 
scene wanted but the bright plumage of the Panama macaws. 

Once seated in the piazza of the Oriental Company's hotel, 
the best managed in the East, I had before me a curious scene. 
Along the streets were pouring silent crowds of tall and graceful 
girls, as we at the first glance supposed, wearing white petti- 
coats and boddices ; their hair carried off the face with a 
decorated hoop, and caught at the back by a high tortoise-shell 
comb. As they drew near, moustaches began to show, and I 
saw that they were men, whilst walking with them were women 
naked to the waist, combless, and far more rough and " manly " 
than their husbands. Petticoat and chignon are male institu- 
tions in Ceylon, and time after time I had to look twice before I 
could fix the passer's sex. My rule at last became to set down 
everybody that was womanly as a man, and everybody that was 



CHAP. I.J ^ ■ MARITIME CEYLOK. 405 

manly as a woman. Cinghalese, Kandians, Tamils from South 
India, and Moormen with crimson caftans and shaven crowns, 
formed the body of the great crowd : but, besides these, there 
were Portuguese, Chinese, Jews, Arabs, Parsees, Englishmen, 
Malays, Dutchmen, and half-caste burghers, and now and then 
a veiled Arabian woman or a Veddah — one of the aboriginal 
inhabitants of the isle, Ceylon has never been independent, 
and in a singular mixture of races her ports bear testimony to 
the number of the foreign conquests. 

Two American missionaries were among the passers-by, but 
one of them, detecting strangers, came up to the piazza in 
search of news. There had been no loss of national character- 
istics in these men j — they were brim-full of the mixture of 
earnestness and quaint profanity which distinguishes the New 
England puritan : one of them described himself to me as 
" just a kind of journeyman soul-saver, like." 

The Australian strangers were not long left unmolested by 
more serious intruders than grave Vermonters. The cry of 
" baksheesh " — an Arabian word that goes from Gibraltar to 
China, and from Ceylon to the Khyber Pass, and which has 
reached us in the form of " boxes" in our phrase "Christmas- 
boxes " — was the first native word I heard in the East, at Galle, 
as it was afterwards the last, at Alexandria. One of the beggars 
was an Albino, fair as a child in a Hampshire lane ; one of 
those strange sports of nature from whom Cinghalese tradition 
asserts the European races to be sprung. 

The beggars were soon driven off by the hotel servants, and 
better licensed plunderers began their work. " Ah safeer, ah 
rupal, ah imral, ah mooney stone, ah opal, ah amtit, ah !" was 
the cry from every quarter, and jewel-sellers of all the nations 
of the East descended on us in a swarm. " Me givee you 
written guarantee dis real stone ;" " Yes, dat real stone ; but 
dis good stone — dat no good stone — no water. Ah, see !" 
" Dat no good stone. Ah, sahib, you tell good stone ; all dese 
bad stone, reg'lar England stone. You go by next ship ? No ? 
Ah, den you come see me shop. Dese ship-passenger stone — 
humbuk stone. Ship gone, den you come me shop ; see good 
stone. When you come ? eh ? when you come ?" " Ah safeer, 
ah catty-eye, ah pinkee collal !" Meanwhile every Galle- 



4o6 GREATER BR IT Am. [chap. i. 

dwelling European, at the bar^ of the hotel, was addmg to the 
din by shouting to the native servants, " Boy, turn out these 
fellows, and stop their noise." This cry of " boy" is a relic of the 
old Dutch times : it was the Hollander's term for his slave, and 
hence for every member of the inferior race. The first servant 
that I heard called " boy " was a tottering white-haired old man. 

The gems of Ceylon have long been famed. One thousand 
three hundred and seventy years ago, the Chinese records tell 
us that Ceylon, then tributary to the empire, sent presents to 
the Brother of the Moon, one of the gifts being a " lapis-lazuli 
spittoon." It is probable that some portion of the million and 
a half pounds sterling which are annually absorbed in this small 
island, but four-fifths the size of Ireland, is consumed in the 
setting of the precious stones for native use ; every one you 
meet wears four or five heavy silver rings, and sovereigns are 
melted down to make gold ornaments. 

Rushing away from the screaming crowd of pedlars, I went 
with some of my Australian friends to stroll upon the ramparts, 
and enjoy the evening salt breeze. We met several bodies of 
white-faced Europeans, sauntering like ourselves, and dressed 
like us in white trousers and loose white jackets and pith hats. 
What we looked like I do not know, but they resembled ships' 
stewards. At last it struck me that they were soldiers, and 
upon inquiring I found that these washed-out dawdlers repre- 
sented a British regiment of the line. I was by this time used 
to see hnesmen out of scarlet, having beheld a parade in bush- 
ranger-beards, and blue-serge " jumpers " at Taranaki in New 
Zealand ; but one puts up easier with the soldier-bushranger, 
than with the soldier-steward. 

The climate of the day had been exquisite with its bright air 
and cooling breeze, and I had begun to think that those who 
knew Acapulco and Echuca could afford to laugh at the East, 
with its thermometer at 88 '^. The reckoning came at night, 
however, for by dark all the breeze was gone, and the thermo- 
meter, instead of falling, had risen to 90° when I lay down to 
moan and wait for dawn. As I was dropping off to sleep at 
about four o'clock, a native came round and closed the doors, 
to shut out the dangerous land-breeze that springs up at that 
hour. Again, at half-past five, it was cooler, and I had begun 



CHAP. I.] MARITIME CEYLON. 407 

to doze, when a cannon-shot fired apparently under my bed, 
brought me upon my feet with something more than a start. 
I remembered the saying of the Western boy before Petersburg, 
when he heard for the first time the five o'clock camp-gun, and 
called to his next neighbour at the fire, " Say, Bill, did you hap 
to hear how partic'lar loud the day broke just now ?" for it was 
the morning-gun, which in Ceylon is always fired at the same 
time, there being less than an hour's difference between the 
longest and shortest days. Although it was still pitch dark, the 
bugles began to sound the reveille oxs. every side — in the infantry 
lines, the artillery barracks, and the lines of the Malay regiment, 
the well-known Ceylon Rifles. Ten minutes afterwards, when 
I had bathed by lamplight, I was eating plantains and taking 
my morning tea in a cool room lit by the beams of the morning 
sun, so short is the April twilight in Ceylon. 

It is useless to consult the thermometer about heat : a 
European can labour in the open air in South Australia with 
the thermometer at iio*^in the shade, while, with a thermometer 
at 88^, the nights are unbearable in Ceylon. To discover 
whether the climate of a place be really hot, examine its news- 
papers ; and if you find the heat recorded, you may make up 
your mind that it is a variable climate, but if no " remarkable 
heat " or similar announcements appear, then you may be sure 
that you are in a permanently hot place. It stands to reason 
that no one in the tropics ever talks of " tropical heat." 

In so equable a climate, the apathy of the Cinghalese is not 
surprising ; but they are not merely lazy, they are a cowardly, 
effeminate, and revengeful race. They sleep and smoke, and 
smoke and sleep, rousing themselves only once in the day to 
snatch a bowl of curry and rice, or to fleece a white man ; and 
so slowly do the people run the race of life that even elephan- 
tiasis, common here, does not seem to put the sufferer far 
behind his fellow-men. Buddhism is no mystery when ex- 
pounded under this climate. See a few Cinghalese stretched 
in the shade of a cocoa-palm, and you can conceive Buddha 
sitting cross-legged for ten thousand years contemplating his 
own perfection. 

The second morning that I spent in Galle, the captain of the 
Bombay was kind enough to send his gig for me to the landing- 



408 , GBEATEB BRITAIN. [chap. i. 

steps at dawn, and his Malay crew soon rowed me to the ship, 
where the captain joined me, and we pulled across the harbour 
to Watering-place Point, and bathed in the shallow sea, out of 
the reach of sharks. When we had dressed, we went on to a 
jetty, to look into the deep water just struck by the rising sun. 
I should have marvelled at the translucency of the waters had 
not the awful clearness with which the bottoms of the Canadian 
lakes stand revealed in evening light been fresh within my 
memory, but here the bottom was fairly paved with corallines 
of inconceivable brilliancy of colour, and tenanted by still more 
gorgeous fish. Of the two that bore the palm, one was a little 
fish of mazarine blue, without a speck of any other colour, and 
perfect too in shape ; the second, a silver fish, with a band of 
soft brown velvet round its neck, and another about its tail. 
In a still more sheltered cove the fish were so thick that dozens 
of Moors were throwing into the water, with the arm-twist of a 
fly-fisher, bare hooks, which they jerked through the shoal and 
into the air, never failing to bring them up clothed with a fish, 
caught most times by the fin. 

In the evening, two of us tried a native dinner, at a house 
where Cinghalese gentlemen dine when they come into Galle 
on business. Our fare was as follows : — First course : a curry 
of the delicious seir-fish a sort of mackerel ; a prawn curry \ a 
bread-fruit and cocoa-nut curry ; a Brinjal curry, and a dish 
made of jack-fruit, garlic, and mace j all washed down by iced 
5v^ater. Second course : plantains, and very old arrack in 
thimble-glasses, followed by black coffee. Of meat there was 
no sign, as the Cinghalese rarely touch it ; and, although we 
liked our vegetarian dinner, my friend passed a criticism in 
action on it by dining again at the hotel-ordinary one hour 
later. We agreed, too, that the sickly smell of cocoa-nut would 
cleave to us for weeks. 

Starting with an Australian friend, at the dawn of my third 
day in the island, I took the coach by the coast road to 
Columbo. We drove along a magnificent road in an avenue 
of giant cocoa-nut palms, with the sea generally within easy 
sight, and with a native hut at each few yards. Every two or 
three miles, the road crossed a lagoon, alive with bathers, and 
near the bridge was generally a village, bazaar, and Buddhist 



CHAP. I.] MARITIME CEYLON. 409 

temple, built pagoda-shape, and filled with worshippers. The 
road was thronged with gaily-dressed Cinghalese ; and now and 
again we would pass a Buddhist priest in saffron-coloured robes, 
hastening along, his umbrella borne over him by a boy clothed 
from top to toe in white. The umbrellas of the priests are of 
yellow silk, and shaped like ours, but other natives carry flat- 
topped umbrellas, gilt, or coloured red and black. The Cin- 
ghalese farmers we met travelling to their temples in carts 
drawn by tiny bullocks. Such was the brightness of the air, 
that the people, down to the very beggars, seemed clad in 
holiday attire. 

As we journeyed on, we began to find more variety in the 
scenery and vegetation, and were charmed with the scarlet- 
blossomed cotton-tree, and with the areca, or betel-nut palm. 
The cocoa-nut groves, too, were carpeted with an undergrowth 
of orchids and ipecacuanha, and here and there was a bread- 
fruit tree or an hibiscus. 

In Ceylon we have retained the Dutch posting system ; and 
light coaches, drawn by four or six small horses at a gallop, run 
over excellent roads, carrying, besides the passengers, two boys 
behind, who shout furiously whenever vehicles obstruct the 
mails, and who at night carry torches high in the air, to light 
the road. Thus we dashed through the bazaars and cocoa 
groves, then across the golden sands covered with rare shells, 
and fringed on the one side with the bright blue dancing sea, 
dotted with many a white sail, and on the other with deep 
green jungle, in which were sheltered dark lagoons. Once in a 
while, we would drive out on to a plain, varied by clumps of 
fig and tulip trees, and, looking to the east, would sight the 
purple mountains of the central range ; then, dashing again 
into the thronged bazaars, would see little but the bright palm 
trees relieved upon an azure sky. The road is one continuous 
village, for the population is twelve times as dense in the 
western as in the eastern provinces of Ceylon. No wonder 
that ten thousand natives have died of cholera within the last 
few months ! All this dense coast population is supported by 
the cocoa-nut, for there are in Ceylon 200,000 acres under 
cocoa palms, which yield from seven to eight hundred million 
cocoa-nuts a year, and are worth two millions sterling. 



4IO GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. i. 

Near Bentotte, where we had lunched off horrible oysters of 
the pearl-yielding kind, we crossed the Kaluganga river, densely 
fringed with mangrove, and in its waters saw a python swim- 
ming bravely towards the shore. Snakes are not so formidable 
as land-leeches, the Cinghalese and planters say, and no one 
hears of many persons being bitten, though a great reward for 
an antidote to the cobra bite has lately been offered by the 
Rajah of Travancore. 

As we entered what the early maps style " The Christian 
Kyngdom of Colombo," though where they found their Chris- 
tians no one knows, our road lay through the cinnamon gardens, 
which are going out of cultivation, as they no longer pay, 
although the cinnamon laurel is a spice-grove in itself, giving 
cinnamon from its bark, camphor from the roots, clove oil from 
its leaves. The plant grows wild about the island, and is cut 
and peeled by the natives at no cost, save that of children's 
labour, which they do not count as cost at all. The scene in 
the gardens that still remain was charming : the cinnamon- 
laurel bushes contrasted well with the red soil, and the air was 
alive with dragon-flies, moths, and winged-beetles, while the 
softness of the evening breeze had tempted out the half-caste 
Dutch " burgher " families of the city, who were driving and 
walking clothed in white, the ladies with their jet hair dressed 
with natural flowers. The setting sun threw brightness without 
heat into the gay scene. 

A friend who had horses ready for us at the hotel where the 
mail-coach stopped, said that it was not too late for a ride 
through the fort, or European town inside the walls ; so, 
cantering along the esplanade, where the officers of the garrison 
were enjoying their evening ride, we crossed the moat, and 
found ourselves in what is perhaps the most graceful street in 
the world : — a double range of long low houses of bright w^hite 
stone, with deep piazzas, hurried in masses of bright foliage, in 
which the fire-flies were beginning to play. In the centre of 
the fort is an Italian campanile, which serves at once as a 
belfry, a clock-tower, and a lighthouse. In the morning, before 
sunrise, we climbed this tower for the view. The central range 
stood up sharply on the eastern sky, as the sun was still hid 
behind it, and to the south-east there towered high the peak 



CHAP. I.] MARITIME CEYLON, 411 

where Adam mourned his son a hundred years. In colour, 
shape, and height, the Cinghalese Alps resemble the Central 
Apennines, and the view from Columbo is singularly like that 
from Pesaro on the Adriatic. As we looked landwards from 
the campanile, the native town was mirrored in the lake, and 
outside the city the white-coated troops were marching by 
companies on to the parade-ground, whence we could faintly 
hear the distant bands. 

Driving back in a carriage, shaped like a street cab, but with 
fixed Venetians instead of sides and windows, we visited the 
curing establishment of the Ceylon Coffee Company, where 
the coffee from the hills is dried and sorted. Thousands of 
native girls are employed in coffee-picking at the various stores, 
but it is doubted whether the whole of this labour is not wasted, 
the berries being sorted according to their shape and size — 
characteristics which seem in no way to affect the flavour. 
The Ceylon exporters say that if we choose to pay twice as 
much for shapely as for ill-shaped berries, it is no business of 
theirs to refuse to humour us by sorting. 

The most remarkable institution in Columbo is the steam 
factory where the Government make or mend such machinery 
as their experts certify cannot be dealt with at any private 
works existing in the island. The Government elephants are 
kept at the same place, but I found them at work up country 
on the Kandy road. 

In passing through the native town upon Slave Island, we 
saw some French Catholic priests in their working jungle 
dresses of blue serge. They have met with singular successes 
in Ceylon, having made 150,000 converts, while the English 
and American missions have between them only 30,000 natives. 
The Protestant missionaries in Ceylon complain much of the 
planters, whom they accuse of declaring when they wish to 
hire men, that " no Christian need apply ;" but it is a remark- 
able fact that neither Protestants nor Catholics can make con- 
verts among the self-supported " Moormen," the active pushing 
inhabitants of the ports, who are Mohamedans to a man. The 
chief cause of the success of the Catholics among the Cinghalese, 
seems to be the earnestness of the French and Italian mis- 
sionaiy priests. Our English missionaries in the East are too 



412 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. i. 

often men incapable of bearing fatigue or climate ; ignorant of 
every trade, and inferior even in teaching and preaching powers 
to their rivals. It is no easy matter to spread Christianity 
among the Cinghalese, the inventors of Buddhism, the most 
ancient and most widely spread of all the religions of the world. 
Every Buddhist firmly believes in the potential perfection of 
man, and is incapable of understanding the ideas of original 
sin and redemption ; and a Cinghalese Buddhist — passionless 
himself — cannot comprehend the passionate worship that Chris- 
tianity requires. The Catholics, however, do not neglect the 
Eastern field for missionary labour. Four of their bishops 
from Cochin China and Japan were met by me in Galle, upon 
their way to Rome. 

Our drive was brought to an end by a visit to the old Dutch 
quarter — a careful imitation of Amsterdam ; indeed, one of its 
roads still bears the portentous Batavian name of Dam Street. 
Their straight canals, and formal lines of trees, the Hollanders 
have carried with them throughout the world ; but in Columbo, 
not content with manufacturing imitation canals, that began 
and ended in a wall, they dug great artificial lakes to recall 
their well-loved Hague. 

The same evening, I set off by the new railway for Kandy 
and Nuwara Ellia (pronounced Nooralia) in the hills. Having 
no experience of the climate of mountain regions in the tropics, 
I expected a merely pleasant change, and left Columbo wear- 
ing my white kit, which served me well enough as far as Ambe 
Pusse — the railway terminus, which we reached at ten o'clock 
at night. We started at once by coach, and had not driven 
far up the hills in the still moonlight before the cold became 
extreme, and I was saved from a severe chill only by the kind- 
ness of the coffee-planter who shared the back seat with me, 
and who, being well clad in woollen, lent me his great-coat. 
After this incident, we chatted pleasantly without fear of inter- 
ruption from our sole companion — a native girl, who sat silently 
chewing betel all the way — and reached Kandy before dawn. 
Telling the hotel servants to wake me in an hour, I wrapped 
myself in a blanket — the first I had seen since I left Australia 
— and enjoyed a refreshing sleep. 



4r? 



CHAPTER 11. 

Kandy. 

The early morning was foggy and cold as an October dawn in 
an English forest ; but before I had been long in the gardens 
of the Government House, the sun rose, and the heat returned 
once more. After wandering among the petunias and fan- 
palms of the gardens, I passed on into the city, the former 
capital of the Kandian or highland kingdom, and one of the 
holiest of Buddhist towns. The kingdom was never conquered 
by the Portuguese or Dutch while they held the coasts, and 
was not overrun by us till 1815, while it has several times been 
in rebellion since that date. The people still retain their 
native customs in a high degree : for instance, the Kandian 
husband does not take his wife's inheritance unless he lives 
with her on her father's land : if she lives with him, she for- 
feits her inheritance. Kandian law, indeed, is expressly main- 
tained by us except in the matters of polygamy and polyandry, 
although the maritime Cinghalese are governed, as are the 
English in Ceylon and at the Cape, by the civil code of 
Holland. 

The difference between the Kandian and coast Cinghalese is 
very great. At Kandy, I found the men wearing flowing 
crimson robes and flat-topped caps, while their faces were lighter 
in colour than those of the coast people, and many of them had 
beards. The women also wore the nose-ring in a difiJ'erent 
way, and were clothed above as well as below the waist. It is 
possible that some day we may unfortunately hear more of this 
energetic and warlike people. 

The city is one that dwells long in the mind. The Upper 
Town is one great garden, so numerous are the sacred groves, 



414 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ii. 

vocal with the song of the Eastern orioles, but here and there 
are dotted about pagoda-shaped temples, identical in form with 
those of Tartary two thousand miles away, and from these there 
proceeds a roar of tom-toms that almost drowns the song. One 
of these temples contains the holiest of Buddhist relics, the 
tooth of Buddha, which is yearly carried in a grand procession. 
When we first annexed the Kandian kingdom, we established 
the Buddhist Church, made our officers take part in the pro- 
cession of the Sacred Tooth, and sent a State offering to 
the shrine. Times are changed since then, but the Buddhist 
priests are still exempt from certain taxes. All round the 
sacred enclosures are ornamented walls, with holy sculptured 
figures j and in the Lower Town are fresh-water lakes and 
tanks, formed by damming the Mavaliganga River, and, also, 
in some measure, holy. An atmosphere of Buddhism pervades 
all Kandy. 

From Kandy, I visited the coffee-district of which it is the 
capital and centre, but was much disappointed with regard to 
the amount of land that is still open to coffee cultivation. At 
the Government Botanic Garden at Peredenia (where the jalap 
plant, the castor-oil plant, and the ipecacuanha were growing 
side by side), I was told that the shrub does not flourish under 
1500, nor over 3000 or 4000 feet above sea-level, and that 
all the best cofiee-land is already planted. Coffee-growing has 
done so much for Ceylon that it is to be hoped it has not 
reached its limit : in thirty-three years, it has doubled her trade 
ten times, and to England alone she now sends two millions 
worth of coffee every year. The central district of the island, 
in which lie the hills and coffee-country, is, with the exception 
of the towns, politically not a portion of Ceylon : there are 
English capital, English management, and Indian labour, and 
the cocoa-palm is unknown; Tamil labourers are exclusively 
employed upon the plantations, although the carrying trade, 
involving but little labour, is in the hands of the Cinghalese. 
No such official discouragement is shown to the European 
planters in Ceylon as that which they experience in India ; and 
were there but more good coffee-lands and more capital, all 
would be well. The planters say that, after two years' heavy 
expenditure and dead loss, 20 per cent, can be made by men 



CHAP. II.] KANDT. 415 

who take in sufficient capital, but that no one ever does take 
capital enough for the land he buys, and that they all have to 
borrow from one of the Columbo companies at 12 per cent, 
and are then bound to ship their coffee through that company 
alone. It is regarded as an open question by many disin- 
terested friends of Ceylon whether it might not be wise for the 
local Government to advance money to the planters : but 
besides the fear of jobbery, there is the objection to this course, 
that the Government, becoming interested in the success of 
coffee-planting, might also come to connive at the oppression 
of the native labourers. This oppression of the people lies at 
the bottom of that Dutch system which is often held up for our 
imitation in Ceylon. 

Those who narrate to us the effects of the Java system forget 
that it is not denied that in the tropical islands, with an idle popu- 
lation and a rich soil, compulsory labour may be the only way 
of developing the resources of the countries, but they fail to 
show the justification for our developing the resources of the 
country by such means. The Dutch culture-system puts a 
planter down upon the croAvn lands, and, having made advances 
to him, leaves it to him to find out how he shall repay the 
Government. Forced labour — under whatever name — is the 
natural result. 

The Dutch, moreover, bribe the great native chiefs by 
princely salaries and vast percentage upon the crops their 
people raise, and force the native agriculturists to grow spices 
for the Royal Market of Amsterdam. Of the purchase of these 
spices the Government has a monopoly : it buys them at what 
price it will, and selling again in Europe to the world, clears 
annually some ^4,000,000 sterling by the job. That plunder, 
slavery, and famine often follow the extension of their system 
is nothing to the Dutch. Strict press-laws prevent the Dutch 
at home from hearing anything of the discontent in Java, ex- 
cept when famine or insurrection call attention to the isle ; and 
;^4,ooo,ooo a year profit, and half the expenses of their navy 
paid for them by one island in the Eastern seas, make up for 
many deaths of brown-faced people by starvation. 

The Dutch often deny that the Government retains the 
monopoly of export ; but the fact of the matter is that the 



4i6 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. it. 

Dutch Trading Company, who have the monopoly of the 
exports of the produce of Crown lands — which amount to two- 
thirds of the total exports of the isle — ^are mere agents of the 
Government. 

It is hard to say that apart from the nature of the culture- 
system, the Dutch principle of making a profit out of the 
countries which they rule is inconsistent with the position of a 
Christian nation. It is the ancient system of countries having 
possessions in the East, and upon our side we are not able to 
show any definite reasons in favour of our course of scrupu- 
lously keeping separate the Indian revenue, and spending 
Indian profits upon India and Cinghalese in Ceylon, except 
such reasons as would logically lead to our quitting India 
altogether. That the Dutch should make a profit out of Java 
is perhaps not more immoral than that they should be there. 
At the same time, the character of the Dutch system lowers the 
tone of the whole Dutch nation, and especially of those who 
have any connexion with the Indies, and effectually prevents 
future amendment. With our system, there is some chance of 
right being done, so small is our self-interest in the wrong. 
From the fact that no surplus is sent home from Ceylon, she is 
at least free from that bane of Java,— the desire of the local 
authorities to increase as much as possible the valuable pro- 
ductions of their districts, even at the risk of famine, provided 
only that they may hope to put off the famine until after their 
, time — a desire that produces the result that subaltern Dutch 
officers who observe in their integrity the admirable rules 
which have been made for the protection of the native popula- 
tion are heartily abused for their ridiculous scrupulosity, as it is 
styled. 

Not to be carried away by the material success of the Dutch 
system, it is as well to bear in mind its secret history. A 
private company — the Dutch Trading Society — was founded 
at Amsterdam in 1824, the then King being the largest share- 
holder. The company was in difficulties in 1830, when the 
King, finding he was losing money fast, sent out as Governor- 
General of the Dutch East Indies his personal friend Van den 
Bosch. The next year, the culture-system, with all its attendant 
horrors, was introduced into Java by Van den Bosch, the Dutch 



CHAP. II.] kandy: A-ii 

Trading Society being made agents' for the Government. The 
result was the extraordinary prosperity of the company, and the 
leaving by the merchant-king of a private fortune of fabulous 
amount. 

The Dutch system has been defended by every conceivable 
kind of blind misrepresentation ; it has even been declared, 
by writers who ought certainly to know better, that the four 
millions of slirplus that Holland draws from Java, being profits 
on trade, are not taxation ! Even the blindest admirers of the 
system are forced, however, to admit that it involves the abso- 
lute prohibition of missionary enterprise, and total exclusion 
from knowledge of the Java people. 

The Ceylon planters have at present political as well as 
financial difficulties on their hands. They have petitioned the 
Queen for " self-government for Ceylon," and for control of the 
revenue by " representatives of the public " — excellent princi- 
ples, if " public " meant public, and " Ceylon," Ceylon ; but, 
when we inquire of the planters what they really mean, we find 
that by " Ceylon " they understand Galle and Columbo Fort, 
and by "the public" they mean themselves. There are at 
present six unofficial members of the Council : of these, the 
whites have three members, the Dutch burghers one, and the 
natives two ; and the planters expect the same proportions to 
be kept in a Council to which supreme power shall be entrusted 
in the disposition of the revenues. They are, indeed, careful 
to explain that they in no way desire the extension of repre- 
sentative institutions to Ceylon. 

The first thing, that strikes the English traveller in Ceylon is 
the apparent slightness of our hold upon the country. In my 
journey from Galle to Columbo, by early morning and mid-day, 
I met no white man ; from Columbo to Kandy, I travelled 
with one, but met none ; at Kandy, I saw no whites ; at 
Nuwara Ellia, not half-a-dozen. On my return, I saw no whites 
between Nuwara Ellia and Ambe Pusse, where there was a 
white man in the railway-station ; and on my return by evening 
from Columbo to Galle, in all the thronging crowds along the 
roads there was not a single European. There are hundreds 
of Cinghalese in the interior who live and die, and never see a 
white man. Out of the two and a quarter millions of people 
who dwell in what the planters call the " colony of Ceylon^" 

2 E 



4x8 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ii. 

there are but 3000 Europeans, of whom 1500 are our soldiers, 
and 250 our civiHans. Of the European non-official class, 
there are but 1300 persons, or about 500 grown-up men. The 
proposition of the Planters' Association is that we should con- 
fide the despotic government over two and a quarter millions 
of Buddhist, Mohamedan, and Hindoo labourers to these 
500 English Christian employers. It is not the Ceylon 
planters who have a grievance against us, but we who have a 
serious complaint against them ; so flourishing a dependency 
should certainly provide for all the costs of her defence. 

Some of the mountain views between Kandy and Nuwara 
Ellia are full of grandeur, though they lack the New Zealand 
snows j but none can match, for variety and colour, that which 
I saw on my return from the descent at the Kaduganava Pass, 
where you look over a foreground of giant-leaved talipot and 
slender areca palms and tall bamboos, lit with the scarlet 
blooms of the cotton-tree, on to a plain dotted with banyan- 
tree groves and broken by wooded hills. On either side, the 
deep valley-bottoms are carpeted with bright green — the wet 
rice-lands, or terraced paddy-fields, from which the natives 
gather crop after crop throughout the year. 

In the union of rich foliage with deep colour and grand 
forms, no scenery save that of New Zealand can bear compari- 
son with that of the hill country of Ceylon, unless, indeed, it be 
the scenery of Java, and the far Eastern isles. 



419 



• CHAPTER III. 

Madras to Calcutta. 

Spending but a single day in Madras — an inferior Columbo — 
I passed on to Calcutta with a pleasant remembrance of the 
air of prosperity that hangs about the chief city of what is still 
called by Bengal civilians "The Benighted Presidency." Small 
as are the houses, poor as are the shops, every one looks well- 
to-do, and everybody happy, from the not undeservedly famed 
cooks at the club to the catamaran men on the shore. Coffee 
and good government have of late done much for Madras. 

The surf consists of two lines of rollers, and is altogether 
inferior to the fine-weather swell on the west coast of New" 
Zealand, and only to be dignified and promoted into surfship 
by men of that fine imagination which will lead them to sniff 
the spices a day before they reach Ceylon, or the pork and 
molasses when off Nantucket light-ship. The row through the 
first roller in the lumbering Massullah boat, manned by a dozen 
sine^vy blacks, the waiting for a chance bet^veen the first and 
second lines of spray, and then the dash for shore, the crew 
singing their measured " Ah ! lah ! lalala ! — ah ! lah ! lalala !" 
the stroke coming with the accented syllable, and the helms- 
man shrieking with excitement, is a more pretentious ceremony 
than that which accompanies the crossing of Hokitika bar, but 
the passage is a far less dangerous one. The Massullah boats" 
are like empty hay-barges on the Thames, but built without 
nails, so that they " give " instead of breaking up when battered 
by the sand on one side and the seas upon the other. This is 
a very w^se precaution in the case of boats which are always 
made to take the shore broadside on. The first sea that 
strikes the boat either shoots the passenger on to the dry sand, 
or puts him where he can easily be caught by the natives on 

2 E 2 



420 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iii. 

the beach, but the Massullah boat herself gets a terrible bang- 
ing before the crew can haul her out of reach of the seas. 

Sighting the Temple of Juggernauth and one palm-tree, but 
seeing no land, we entered the Hoogly, steaming between light- 
houses, guard-ships, and buoys, but not catching a glimpse of 
the low land of the Sunderbunds till we had been many hours 
in " the river." After lying all night off the tiger-infested 
island of Saugur, we started on our run up to Calcutta before 
the sun was risen. Compared with Ceylon, the scene was 
English ; there was nothing tropical about it except the mist 
upon the land ; and low villas and distant factory chimneys 
reminded one of the Thames between Battersea and Fulham. 
Coming into Garden Reach, where large ships anchor before 
they sail, we had a long, low building on our right, gaudy and 
architecturally hideous, but from its vast size almost imposing : 
it was the palace of the dethroned King of Oude, the place 
where, it is said, are carried on deeds become impossible in 
Lucknow. Such has been the extravagance of the King that 
the Government of India has lately interfered, and appointed a 
commission to pay his debts, and deduct them from his income 
of ^120,000 a year; for we pay into the privy purse of the 
dethroned Vizier of Oude exactly twice the yearly sum that we 
set aside for that of Queen Victoria. Whatever income is 
allowed to native princes, they always spend the double. The 
experience of the Dutch in Java and our own in India is 
uniform in this respect. Removed from that slight restraint 
upon expenditure which the fear of bankruptcy or revolution 
forces upon reigning kings, native princes supported by 
European Governments run recklessly into debt. The com- 
mission which was sitting upon the debts of the King of Oude 
while I was in Calcutta warned him that, if he offended a 
second time, Government would for the future spend his income 
for him. It is not the King's extravagance alone, however, 
that is complained of Always notorious for debauchery, he 
has now become infamous for his vices. One of his wives 
was arrested while I was in Calcutta for purchasing girls for 
the harem, but the King himself escaped. For nine years he 
has never left his palace, yet he spends, we are told, from 
;2^20o,ooo to £250,000 a year. 



CHAP. III.] MADRAS TO CALCUTTA. 421 

In his extravagance and immorality the King of Oude does 
not stand alone in Calcutta. His mode of life is imitated by 
the wealthy natives ; his vices are mimicked by every young 
Bengalee baboo. It is a question whether we are not respon- 
sible for the tone which has been taken by "civilization" in 
Calcutta. The old philosophy has gone, and left nothing in its 
place; we have by moral force destroyed the old religions in 
Calcutta, but we have set up no new. Whether the character 
of our Indian Government, at once levelling and paternal, has 
not much to do with the spread of careless sensuality is a ques- 
tion before answering which it would be well to look to France, 
where a similar government has for sixteen years prevailed. 
In Paris, at least, democratic despotism is fast degrading the 
French citizen to the moral level of the Bengalee baboo. 

The first thing in Calcutta that I saw was the view of the 
Government House from the Park Reserve — a miniature 
Sahara since its trees were destroyed by the great cyclone. 
The Viceroy's dwelling, though crushed by groups of lions and 
unicorns of gigantic stature and astonishing design, is an im- 
posing building ; but it is the only palace in the " city of 
palaces " — a name which must have been given to the pestife- 
rous city by some one who had never seen any other towns but 
Liverpool and London. The true city of palaces is Lucknow. 

In Calcutta, I first became acquainted with that unbounded 
hospitality of the great mercantile houses in the East of which 
I have since acquired many pleasing remembrances. The 
luxury of " the firm " impresses the English traveller ; the huge 
house is kept as an hotel ; every one is welcome to dinner, 
breakfast, and bed in the verandah, or in a room, if he can 
sleep under a roof in the hot weather. Sometimes two and 
sometimes twenty sit down to the meals, and always without 
notice to the butlers or the cooks, but every one is welcome, 
down to the friend of a friend's friend ; and junior clerks will 
write letters of introduction to members of the firm, which 
secure the bearer a most hospitable welcome from the other 
clerks, even when all the partners are away. " If Brown is not 
there. Smith will be, and if he's away, why then Johnson will 
put you up," is the form of invitation to the hospitalities of an 
Eastern firm. The finest of fruits are on table between five 



422 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. hi. 

and six, and tea and iced drinks are ready at all times, from 
dawn to breakfast — a ceremony which takes place at ten. To 
the regular meals you come in or not as you please, and no 
one trained in Calcutta or Bombay can conceive offence being 
taken by a host at his guest accepting, without consulting him, 
invitations to dine out in the city, or to spend some days at a 
villa in its outskirts. Servants are in the corridors by day and 
night at the call of guests, and your entertainers tell you that, 
although they have not time to go about with you, servants 
will always be ready to drive you at sunset to the band-stand in 
the carriage of some member of the firm. 

The population of Calcutta is as motley as that of Galle, 
though the constituents are not the same. Greeks, Armenians, 
and Burmese, besides many Eurasians, or English-speaking 
half-castes, mingle with the mass of Indian Mohamedans and 
Hindoos. The hot weather having suddenly set in, the Cal- 
cutta officials, happier than the merchants — who, however, care 
little about heat when trade is good — were starting for Simla in 
a body, " just as they were warming to their work," as the Cal- 
cutta people say, and, finding that there was nothing to be done 
in the stifling city, I, too, determined to set off. 

The heat was great at night, and the noisy native crows and 
whistling kites held durbars inside my window in the only cool 
hour of the twenty-four — namely, that which begins at dawn — 
and thus hastened my departure from Calcutta by preventing 
me from taking rest while in it. Hearing that at Patna there 
was nothing to be seen or learnt, I travelled from Calcutta to 
Benares — 500 miles — in the same train and railway carriage. 
Our first long stoppage was at Chandernagore, but, as the native 
baggage-coolies, or porters, howl the station names in their own 
fashion, I hardly recognised the city in the melancholy moan of 
" Orn-dorn-orn-gorne," which welcomed the train, and it was 
not till I saw a French infantry uniform upon the platform that 
I remembered that Chandernagore, a village belonging to the 
French, lies hard by Calcutta, to which city it was once a dan- 
gerous rival. It is said that the French retain their Indian 
dependencies instead of selling them to us as did the Dutch, in 
order that they may ever bear in mind the fact that we once 
conquered them in Indiaj but it would be hard to find any real 



CHAP, m.] MADRAS TO CALCUTTA. 423 

ground for their retention, unless they are held as centres for 
the Catholic missions. We will not even permit them to be 
rr.ade smuggling depots, for which purpose they would be ex- 
cellently adapted. The whole of the possessions in India of the 
Flench amount together to only twenty-six leagues square. 
Even Pondicherry, the only French-Indian dependency of which 
the name is often heard in Europe, is cut into several portions 
by strips of British territory, and the whole of the French- 
Indiaa dependencies are mere specks of land isolated in our 
vast territories. The officer who was lounging in the station 
was a native ; indeed, in the territory of Chandernagore there 
are but 230 Europeans, and but 1500 in all French India. He 
made up to my compartment as though he would have got in, 
which I wished that he would have done, as natives in the 
French service all speak French ; but, seeing a European, he 
edged away to a dark uncomfortable compartment. This action 
was, I fear, a piece of silent testimony to the prejudice which 
makes our people in India almost invariably refuse to travel 
with a native, whatever may be his rank. 

As we passed through Burdwan and Rajmahal, where the 
East Indian Railway taps the Ganges, the station scenes became 
more and more interesting. We associate with the word " rail- 
way " ideas that are peculiarly English : — shareholders and 
directors, guards in blue, policemen in dark green, and porters 
in brown corduroy ; no English institution, however, assumes 
more readily an Oriental dress. Station-masters and sparrows 
alone are English ; everything else on a Bengal railway is purely 
Eastern. Sikh irregulars jostle begging fakeers in the stations; 
palkees and doolies — palankeens and litters, as we should call 
them — wait at the back doors; ticket-clerks smoke water-pipes ; 
an ibis drinks at ths engine-tank ; a sacred cow looks over the 
fence, and a tame elephant reaches up with his trunk at the 
telegraph wire, on which sits a hoopoe, while an Indian vulture 
crowns the post. 

"When we came opposite to the Monghyr Hills, the only 
natural objects which for 1600 miles break the level of the great 
plain of Hindostan, Sonthals and people of the Central-India 
tribes, small-headed and savage-looking, were mingled with the 
Hindoos at the stations. In blackness there was not much 



424 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. hi. 

difference between the races, for low-caste Bengalees are as 
black as Guinea negroes. 

As the day grew hot, a water-carrier with a well-filled skin 
upon his back appeared at every station, and came running to 
the native cars in answer to the universal long-drawn shout of 
^' Ah ! ah ! Bheestie— e !" 

The first view of the Ganges calls up no enthusiasm. The 
Thames below Gravesend half dried up would be not unlike it ; 
indeed, the river itself is as ugly as the Mississippi or Missouri, 
while its banks are more hideous by far than theirs. Beyond 
Patna, the plains, too, become as monotonous as the river — 
flat, dusty, and treeless, they are no way tropical in theii cha- 
racter; they lie, indeed, wholly outside the tropics. I after kvards 
found that a man may cross India from the Irawaddy to the 
Indus, and see no tropical scenery, no tropical cultivation. 
The aspect of the Ganges valley is that of Cambridgeshire, or 
of parts of Lincoln seen after harvest time, and with flocks of 
strange and brilliant birds and an occasional jackal thrown in. 
The sun is hot — not, indeed, much hotter than in Australia, but 
the heat is of a different kind to that encountered by the English 
in Ceylon or the West Indies. From a military point of view, 
the plains may be described as a parade-ground continued to 
infinity; and this explains the success of our small forces against 
the rebels in 1857, our cavalry and artillery having in all cases 
swept their infantry from these levels with the utmost ease. 

A view over the plains by daylight is one which in former 
times some old Indians can never have enjoyed. Many a lady 
in the days of palki-dawklhas passed a life in che Deccan table- 
land without ever seeing a mountain, or knowing she was on 
the top of one. Carried up and down the ghauts at night, it 
was only by by the tilting of her palki that she could detect the 
rise or fall, for day travelling for ladies was almost unknown in 
India before it was introduced with the railways. 

At Patna, the station was filled with crowds of railway coolies, 
or navvies, as we should say, who, with their tools and baggage, 
were camped out upon the platform, smoking peacefully. I 
afterwards found that natives have little idea of time-tables and 
departure hours. When they want to go ten miles by railway, 
they walk straight down to the nearest station, and there smoke 



CHAP. III.] MADRAS TO CALCUTTA, 425 

their hookahs till the train arrives — at the end of twenty-four 
hours or ten minutes, as the case may be. There is but one 
step that the more ignorant among the natives are in a hurry to 
take, and that is to buy their tickets. They are no sooner come 
to the terminus than with one accord they rush at the native 
ticket-clerk, yelling the name of the station to which they wish 
to go. In vain he declares that, the train not being due for 
ten or fifteen hours, there is plenty of time for the purchase. 
Open-mouthed, and wrought up almost to madness, the pas- 
sengers dance round him, screaming " Burdwan !" or "Seram- 
poor !" or whatever the name may be, till at last he surrenders 
at discretion. There is often no room for all who wish to 
go ; indeed, the worst point about the management of the 
railways lies in the defective accommodation for the native 
passengers, and their treatment by the English station-masters 
is not always good : I saw them on many occasions terribly 
kicked and cuffed ; but Indian station-masters are not very 
highly paid, and are too often men who cannot resist the 
temptations to violence which despotic power throws in their 
way. They might ask with the Missourian in the United States 
army when he was accused of drunkenness, " Whether Uncle 
Sam expected to get all the cardinal virtues for fifteen dollars a 
month ?" 

The Indian railways are all made and worked by companies ; 
but as the Government guarantees the interest of five per cent., 
which only the East Indian, or Calcutta and Delhi line can pay, 
it interferes much in the management. The telegraph is both 
made and worked by Government ; and the reason why the 
railways were not put upon the same footing is that the Govern- 
ment of India was doubtful as to the wisdom of borrowing 
directly the vast sum required, and doubtful also of the possi- 
bility of borrowing it without diminishing its credit. 

The most marked among the effects of railways upon the 
state of India are, as a moral change, the weakening of caste 
ties — as a physical, the destruction of the Indian forests. If a 
rich native discovers that he can, by losing caste in touching 
his inferiors, travel a certain distance in a comfortable second^ 
class carriage for ten rupees, while a first-class ticket costs him 
twenty, he will often risk his caste to save his pound ; still, caste 



426 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. hi. 

yields but slowly to railways and the telegraph. It is but a very 
few- years since one of my friends received a thousand rupees 
for pleading in a case which turned on the question whether the 
paint-spot on Krishna's nose, which is also a caste sign, should 
be drawn as a plain horizontal crescent, or with a pendant from 
the centre. Only a year since, in Orissa, it was seen that 
Hindoo peasants preferred cannibalism, or death by starvation, 
to defilement by eating their bullocks. 

As for the forests, their destruction has already in many places 
changed a somewhat moist climate to one of excessive drought, 
and planting is now taking place, with a view both to supplying 
the railway engines, and bringing back the rains. On the East 
Indian line, I found that they burnt mixed coal and wood, but 
the Indian coal is scarce and bad, and lies entirely in shallow 
" pockets." 

The train reached Mogul-Serai, the junction for Benares, at 
midnight of the day following that on which it left Calcutta? 
and, changing my carriage at once, I asked how long it would 
be before we started, to which the answer was, " half an hour;" 
so I went to sleep. Immediately, as it seemed, I was awakened 
by whispering, and, turning, saw a crowd of boys and baggage- 
coolies at the carriage-door. When I tried to discover what 
they wanted, my Hindostanee broke down, and it was some 
time before I found that I had slept through the short journey 
from Mogul-Serai, and had dozed on in the station till the lights 
had been put out, before the coolies woke me. Crossing the 
Ganges by the bridge of boats, I found myself in Benares, the 
ancient Varanasi, and sacred capital of the Hindoos. 



42 7 



CHAPTER IV. 

Benares. 

In the comparative cool of early morning, I sallied out on a 
stroll through the outskirts of Benares. Thousands of women 
were stepping gracefully along the crowded roads, bearing on 
their heads the water-jars, while at every few paces there was a 
well, at which hundreds were waiting along with the bheesties 
their turn for lowering their bright gleaming copper cups to the 
well-water to fill their skins or vases. All were keeping up a 
continual chatter, women with women, men with men : all the 
tongues were running ceaselessly. It is astonishing to see the 
indignation that a trifling mishap creates — such gesticulation, 
such shouting, and loud talk, you would think that murder at 
least was in question. The world cannot show the Hindoo's 
equal as a babbler ; the women talk while they grind corn, the 
men while they smoke their water-pipes ; your true Hindoo is 
never quiet ; when not talking, he is playing on his tom-tom. 

The Doorgha Khond, the famed Temple of the Sacred 
Monkeys, I found thronged with worshippers, and garlanded in 
every part with roses : it overhangs one of the best holy tanks 
in India, but has not much beauty or grandeur, and is chiefly 
remarkable for the swarms of huge, fat-paunched, yellow- 
bearded, holy monkeys, whose outposts hold one quarter of the 
city, and whose main body forms a living roof to the temple. 
A singular contrast to the Doorgha Khond was the Queen's 
College for native students, built in a mixture of Tudor and 
Hindoo architecture. The view from the roof is noticeable, 
depending as it does for its beauty on the mingling of the rich 
green of the timber with the gay colours of the painted native 
huts. Over the trees are seen the minarets at the river-side. 



428 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. iv. 

and an unwonted life was given to the view by the smoke and 
flames that were rising from two burning huts, in widely- 
separated districts of the native town. It is said that the 
natives, whenever they quarrel with their neighbours, always 
take the first opportunity of firing their huts ; but in truth the 
huts in the hot weather almost fire themselves, so inflammable 
are their roofs and sides. 

When the sun had declined sufficiently to admit of another 
excursion, I started from my bungalow, and, passing through 
the elephant-corral, went down with a guide to the ghauts, the 
observatory of Jai Singh, and the Golden Temple. From the 
minarets of the mosque of Aurungzebe I had a lovely sunset view 
of the ghauts, the city, and the Ganges ; but the real sight of 
Benares, after all, lies in a walk through the tortuous passages 
that do duty for streets. No carriages can pass them, they are 
so narrow. You walk preceded by your guide, who warns the 
people, that they may stand aside, and not be defiled by your 
touch, for that is the real secret of the apparent respect paid to 
you in Benares ; but the sacred cows are so numerous and so 
obstinate that you cannot avoid sometimes jostling them. The 
scene in the passages is the most Indian in India. The gaudy 
dresses of the Hindoo princes spending a week in purification 
at the holy place, the frescoed fronts of the shops and houses, 
the deafening beating of the tomtoms, and, above all, the 
smoke and sickening smell from the "burning ghauts," mingled 
with a sweeter smell of burning spices, that meet you as you 
work your way through the vast crowds of pilgrims who are 
pouring up from the river's bank — all alike are strange to the 
English traveller, and fill his mind with that indescribable awe 
which everywhere accompanies the sight of scenes and cere- 
monies that we do not understand. When once you are on 
the Ganges bank itself, the scene is wilder still : — a river front 
of some three miles, faced with lofty ghauts, or flights of stairs, 
over which rise, pile above pile, in sublime confusion, lofty 
palaces with oriel windows hanging over the sacred stream; 
observatories with giant sun-dials, gilt domes (goldejt, the story 
runs), and silver minarets. On the ghauts, rows of fires, each 
with a smouldering body ; on the river, boat-loads of pilgrims, 
and fakeers praying while they float j under the houses, lines of 



CHAP. IV.] BENARES. 429 

prostrate bodies — those of the sick — brought to the sacred 
Ganges to die — or, say our Government spies, to be murdered 
by suffocation with sacred mud; while prowHng about are the 
wolf-hke fanatics who feed on putrid flesh. The whole is lit by 
a sickly sun fitfully glaring through the smoke, while the Ganges 
stream is half obscured by the river fog and reek of the hot 
earth. 

The lofty pavilions that crown the river front are ornamented 
with paintings of every beast that walks and bird that flies ; with 
monsters, too — pink and green and spotted — with griflins, 
dragons, and elephant-headed gods embracing dancing-girls. 
Here and there are representations of red-coated soldiers — 
English, it would seem, for they have white faces, but so, the 
Maories say, have the New Zealand fairies, who are certainly 
not British. The Benares taste for painting leads to the 
decoration with pink and yellow spots of the very cows. The 
tiger is the commonest of all the figures on the walls — indeed, 
the explanation that the representations are allegorical, or that 
gods are pictured in tiger shape, has not removed from my 
mind the belief that the tiger must have been worshipped in 
India at some early date. All Easterns are inclined to worship 
the beasts that eat them : the Javanese light floating sacrifices 
to their river crocodiles ; the Scindees at Kurrachee venerate 
the sacred muggur, or man-eating alligator ; the hill-tribes pray 
to snakes; indeed, "to a new comer, all Indian religion has the 
air of devil-worship, or worship of the destructive principle in 
some shape : the gods are drawn as grinning fiends, they are 
propitiated by infernal music, they are often worshipped with 
obscene and hideous rites. There is even something cruel in 
the monotonous roar of the great tomtoms ; the sound seems to 
connect itself with widow-burning, with child-murder, with Jug- 
gernauth processions. Since the earliest known times, the 
tomtom has been used to drown the cries of tortured fanatics ; 
its booming is bound up with the thousand barbarisms of false 
religion. If the scene on the Benares ghauts is full of horrors, 
we must not forget that Hindooism is a creed of fear and horror, 
not of love. 

The Government of India has lately instituted an inquiry into 
the alleged abuses of the custom of taking sick Hindoos to 



43 o - GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iv. 

the Ganges-side to die, with a view to regulating or suppressing 
the practice which prevails in the river-side portion of Lower 
Bengal. At Benares, Bengal people are still taken to the 
river-side, but not so other natives, as Hindoos dying anywhere 
in the sacred city have all the blessings which the most holy 
death can possibly secure j the Benares Shastra, moreover, 
forbids the practice, and I saw but two cases of it in the city, 
although I had seen many near Calcutta. Not only are aged 
people brought from their sick-rooms, laid in the burning 
sun, and half suffocated with the Ganges water poured down 
their throats, but, owing to the ridicule which follows if they 
recover, or the selfishness of their relatives, the water is often 
muddier than it need be : hence the phrase " ghaut murder," by 
which this custom is generally known. Similar customs are not 
unheard of in other parts of India, and even in Polynesia and North 
America. The Veddahs, or black Aborigines of Ceylon, were, 
up to very lately, in the habit of carrying their dying parents or 
children into the jungle ; and, having placed a chatty of water 
and some rice by their side, leaving them to be devoured by 
wild • beasts. Under pressure from our officials, they are 
believed to have ceased to act thus, but they continue, we are 
told, to throw their dead to the leopards and crocodiles. The 
Maories, too, have a way of taking out to die alone those whom 
their seers have pronounced doomed men, but it is probable 
that, among the rude races, the custom which seems to be a 
relic of human sacrifice has not been so grossly abused as it has 
been by the Bengal Hindoos. The practice of Ganjatra is but 
one out of many similar barbarities that disgrace the religion of 
the Hindoos, but it is fast sharing the fate of suttee and 
infanticide. 

As I returned through the bazaar, I met many most unholy- 
looking visitors to the sacred town. Fierce Rajpoots, with 
enormous turbans ornamented with zig-zag stripes ; Bengal 
bankers, in large purple turbans, curling their long white 
moustaches, and bearing their critical noses high aloft as they 
daintily picked their way over the garbage of the streets ; and 
savage retainers of the rajahs staying for a season at their city 
palaces, were to the traveller's eye no very devout pilgrims. In 
truth, the immoralities of the " holy city " are as great as its 



CHAP. IV.] BENARES. 431 

religious virtues^ and it is the chosen ground of the loose 
characters as well as of the pilgrims of the Hindoo world. 

In the whole of the great throng in the bazaar, hardly the 
slightest trace of European dressing was to be perceived : the 
varnished boots of the wealthier Hindoos alone bore witness to 
the existence of English trade — a singular piece of testimony, 
this, to the essential conservatism of the Oriental mind. With 
any quantity of old army clothing to be got for the asking, you 
never see a rag of it on a native back — not even on that of the 
poorest coolie. If you give a blanket to an outdoor servant, he 
will cut it into strips, and wear them as a puggree round his 
head ; but this is about the only thing he will accept, unless to 
sell it in the bazaar. 

As I stopped to look for a moment at the long trains of laden 
camels that were winding slowly through the tortuous streets, I 
saw a European soldier cheapening a bracelet with a native 
jeweller. He was the first topee-wallah ("hat-fellow," or " Euro- 
pean ") that I had seen in Benares city. Calcutta is the only 
town in Northern India in which you meet Europeans in your 
walks or rides ; and, even there, there is but one European to 
every sixty natives. In all India, there are, including troops, 
children, and officials, far less than as many thousands of 
Europeans as there are millions of natives. 

The evening after that on which I visited the native town, I 
saw in Secrole cantonments, near Benares, the India hated and 
dreaded by our troops — by day a blazing deadly heat and sun, 
at night a still more deadly fog — a hot white fog, into which the 
sun disappears half an hour before his time for setting, and out 
of which he shoots soon after seven in the morning, to blaze 
and kill again — a pestiferous fever-breeding ground-fog, out of 
which stand the tops of the palms, though their stems are 
invisible in the steam. Compared with our English summer 
climate, it seems the atmosphere of another planet. 

Among the men in the cantonments, I found much of that 
demoralization that heat everywhere produces among English- 
men. The newly-arrived soldiers appear to pass their days in 
alternate trials of hard drinking and of total abstinence, and are 
continually in a state of nervous fright, which in time must 
wear them out, and make them an easy prey to fever. The 



432 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. iv. 

officers who are fresh from England often behave in much the 
same manner as the men, though with them " belatee pawnee " 
takes the place of plain water with the brandy. "Belatee pawnee" 
means, being translated, " English water," but, when interpreted, 
it means " soda-water " — the natives once believing that this 
was English river-water, bottled and brought to India by us as 
they carry Ganges water to the remotest parts. The super- 
stition is now at an end, owing to the fact that natives are 
themselves largely employed in the making of soda-water, which 
is cheaper in India than it is at home ; but the name remains. 

Our men kill themselves with beer, with brandy-and-soda- 
water, and with careless inattention to night chills, and then 
blame the poor climate for their fevers, or die cursing " India." 
Of course, long residence in a climate winterless and always 
hot at mid-day produces or intensifies certain diseases ; but 
brandy-and-soda-water produces more, and intensifies all. They 
say it is " soda-and-brandy " the first month, and then " brandy- 
and-soda," but that men finally take to putting in the soda-water 
first, and then somehow the brandy always kills them. If a 
man wears a flannel belt and thick clothes when he travels by 
night, and drinks hot tea, he need not fear India. 

In all ways, Benares is the type of India : in the Secrole 
cantonments, you have the English in India, intelligent enough, 
but careless, and more English than they are at home, with 
garrison chaplains, picnics, balls, and champagne suppers ; hard 
by, in the native town, the fierce side of Hindooism, and streets 
for an Englishman to show himself in which ten years ago was 
almost certain death. Benares is the centre of all the political 
intrigues of India, but the great mutiny itself was hatched there 
without being heard of at Secrole. Except that our policemen 
now perambulate the town, change in Benares there has been 
none. Were missionaries to appear openly in its streets, their 
fate would still very possibly be the same as that which in this 
city befell St. Thomas. 



433 



CHAPTER V, 

Caste. 

One of the greatest difficulties with which the British have to 
contend in Hindostan is how to discover the tendencies, how 
to follow the changes, of native opinion. Your Hindoo is so 
complaisant a companion, that, whether he is your servant at 
threepence a day, or the ruler of the State in which you dwell, 
he is perpetually striving to make his opinions the reflex of 
your own. You are engaged in a continual struggle to prevent 
your views from being seen, in order that you may get at his : 
in this you always fail ; a slight hint is enough for a Hindoo, 
and, if he cannot find even that much of suggestion in your 
words, he confines himself to commonplace. We should see in 
this, not so much one of the forms assumed by the cringing 
slavishness born of centuries of subjection — not so much an 
example of Oriental cunning, as of the polish of Eastern man- 
ners. Even in our rude country, it is hardly courteous, what- 
ever your opinions, flatly to contradict the man with whom you 
happen to be talking ; with the Hindoo, it is the height of ill- 
breeding so much as to differ from him. The results of the 
practice are deplorable ; our utter ignorance of the secret his- 
tory of the rebellion of 1857 is an example of its working, for 
there must have been a time, before discontent ripened into 
conspiracy, when we might have been advised and warned. 
The native newspapers are worse than useless to us ; accepted 
as exponents of Hindoo views by those who know no better, 
and founded mostly by British capital, they are at once inca- 
pable of directing and of acting as indexes to native opinion, 
and express only the sentiments of half-a-dozen small mer- 
chants at the presidency towns, who give the tone to some 

2 F 



434 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. v. 

two or three papers, which are copied and followed by the 
remainder. 

The result of this difficulty in discovering native opinion is 
that our officers, however careful, however considerate in their 
"bearing towards the natives, daily wound the feelings of the 
people who are under their care by acts which, though done in 
a praiseworthy spirit, appear to the natives deeds of gross 
stupidity or of outrageous despotism. It is hopeless to attempt 
to conciliate, it is impossible so much as to govern unless by 
main force continually displayed, an Eastern people in whose 
religious thought we are not deeply learned. 

Not only are we unacquainted with the feelings of the people, 
but we are lamentably ignorant of the simplest facts about their 
religions, their wealth, and their occupations ; for no census of 
all India has yet been taken. A complete census had, indeed, 
been taken, not long before my visit, in Central India, and 
another in the North-West Provinces, but none in Madras, 
Bombay, the Punjaub, or Bengal. The difficulties in the way 
of the officials who carried through the arrangements for the 
two that had been taken were singularly great. In the Central 
Provinces, the census-papers had to be prepared in five lan- 
guages ; both here and in the North-West, the purely scientific 
nature of the inquiry had to be brought home to the minds of 
the people. In Central India, the hill tribes believed that our 
object in the census was to pave the way for the collection of 
the unmarried girls as companions for our wifeless soldiers, so 
all began marrying forthwith. In the North-West, the natives 
took it into their heads that our object was to see how many 
able-bodied men would be available for a war against Russia, 
and to collect a poll-tax to pay for the expedition. The 
numerous tribes that are habitually guilty of infanticide threw 
every difficulty in the way ; Europeans disliked the whole affair, 
on account of the insult offered to their dignity in ranking them 
along with natives. It must be admitted, indeed, that the pro- 
visions for recording caste distinctions gave an odd shape to 
the census-papers left at the houses at Secrole, in which Euro- 
pean officers were asked to state their "caste or tribe." The 
census of the Central Provinces was imperfect enough, but 
that of the North-Weit was the second that had been taken 



CHAP, y.] CASTE. 435 

there, and showed signs of scientific arrangement and great 
care. 

The North-West Provinces include the great towns of Benares, 
Agra, and Allahabad, and the census fell into my hands at 
Benares itself, at the Sanscrit College. It was a strange pro- 
duction, and seemed to have brought together a mass of infor- 
mation respecting castes and creeds which was new even to 
those who " had lived long in the North-West Provinces. All 
callings in India being hereditary, there were entries recording 
the presence in certain towns of " hereditary clerks who pray 
to their inkhorns," " hereditary promoters of marriages," " here- 
ditary beggars," " hereditary planters of slips or cuttings," 
"hereditary gravediggers," "hereditary hermits," and "hereditary 
hangmen," for in India a hangmanship descends with as much 
regularity as a crown. In the single district of the Dehra 
Valley, there are 1500 "hereditary tomtom men" — drummers 
at the festivals ; 234 Brahmins of Bijnour returned themselves 
as having for profession " the receipt of presents to avert the 
influence of evil stars." In Bijnour, there are also fifteen people 
of a caste which professes " the pleasing of people by assuming 
disguises," while at Benares there is a whole caste — the Bhats 
— whose hereditary occupation is to " satirise the enemies of 
the rich, and to praise their friends," and another caste whose 
members receive alms only at the times of eclipses of the moon. 
In the North-West Provinces there are 572 distinct castes 
in all. 

The accounts which some castes give of their origin read 
strangely in a solemn governmental document : the members of 
one caste described themselves as " descended from Maicasur, a 
demon ;" but some of the records are less legendary and more 
historic. One caste in the Dehra Valley sent in a note that 
they came in 1000 a.d. from the Deccan ; another that they 
emigrated from Arabia 500 years ago. The Gour Brahmins 
claim to have been in the district of Moozufifernuggur for 
5000 years. 

Under the title of " occupations," the heads of families alone 
were given, and not the number of those dependent on them, 
whence it comes that in the whole province only " 11,000 tom- 
tom players " were set down. The habits and tastes of the 

2 F 2 



436 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. v. 

people are easily seen in the entries: " 3600 firework manufac- 
turers," "45 makers of crowns for idols," "4353 gold-bangle 
makers," "29,136 glass-bangle makers," " 1123 astrologers." 
There are also 145 "ear-cleaners," besides " kite-makers," " ear- 
piercers," "pedigree-makers," "makers of caste-marks," "cow- 
dung sellers," and " hereditary painters of horses with spots." 
There was no backwardness in the followers of maligned pur- 
suits : 974 people in Allahabad described themselves as "low 
blackguards," 35 as " men who beg with threats of violence," 
25 as "hereditary robbers," 479,015 as "beggars," 29 as 
"howlers at funerals," 226 as " flatterers for gain /' "vagabonds," 
"charmers," "informers" were all set down, and iioo returned 
themselves as " hereditary buffoons," while 2000 styled them- 
selves "conjurors," 4000 "acrobats," and 6372 "poets." In 
one district alone there were 777 "soothsayers and astrologers'' 
by profession. 

It is worthy of notice that, although there are in the North- 
West Provinces half a million of beggars in a population of 
thirty millions, they seem never to beg of Europeans — at least, 
I was not once asked for alms during my stay in India. If the 
smallest service be performed, there comes a howl of " O Bauks- 
heece !" from all quarters, but at other times natives seem afraid 
to beg of Englishmen. 

The number of fakeers, soothsayers, charmers, and other 
" religious" vagabonds is enormous, but the dense ignorance of 
the people renders them a prey to witchcraft, evil-eye, devil- 
influence, and all such folly. In Central India, there are whole 
districts which are looked upon as witch-tracts or haunted places, 
and which are never approached by man, but set aside as homes 
for devils. A gentleman who was lately engaged there on the 
railroad survey, found that night after night his men were 
frightened out of their wits by "fire-fiends," or blazing demons. 
He insisted that they should take him to the spot where these 
strange sights were seen, and to his amazement he, too, saw the 
fire-devil ; at least, he saw a blaze of light moving slowly 
through the jungle. Gathering himself up for a chase, he 
rushed at the devil with a club, when the light suddenly disap- 
peared, and instantly shone out from another spot, a hundred 
yards from the former place. Seeing that there was some 



CHAP, v.] CASTE. 43 7 

trickery at work, he hid himself, and after some hours caught 
his devil, who, to escape from a sound drubbing, gave an expla- 
nation of the whole affair. The man said that the natives of 
the surveyor's party had stolen his mangoes for several nights, 
but that at last he had hit on a plan for frightening them away. 
He and his sons went out at dark with pots of blazing oil upon 
their heads, and, when approached by thieves, the leading one 
put a cover on his pot, and became invisible, while the second 
uncovered his. The surveying party got the drubbing, and the 
devil escaped scot-free ; but the surveyor, with short-sighted 
wisdom, told his men, who had itot seen him catch the fire- 
bearer, that he had had the honour of an interview with the 
devil himself, who had joyfully informed him of the thefts com- 
mitted by the men. The surveyor did not admit that he was 
from this time forward worshipped by his party, but it is not 
unlikely that such was the case. One of the hill-tribes of Madras 
worships Colonel Palmer, a British officer who died some seventy 
years ago, just as Drake was worshipped in America, and 
Captain Cook in Hawaii ; and Colonel Wallace is said to be 
worshipped in some village in the Deccan. It was one of these 
tribes that invented the well-known worshipping machine, or 
"praying-wheel." 

The hill-tribes are less refined, but hardly more ignorant in their 
fanaticism than are the Hindoos. At Bombay, upon the beach 
where the dead are buried, or rather tossed to the wild beasts, 
I saw a filthy and holy Hindoo saint, whose claim to veneration 
consists in his having spent the whole of the days and portions 
of the nights for twenty years in a stone box in which he can 
neither stand, nor lie, nor sit, nor sleep. These saintly fakeers 
have still much influence with the Hindoo mass, but in old 
times their power and their insolence were alike unbounded. 
Agra itself was founded to please one of them. The great 
Emperor Akbar, who, although a lax Mohamedan, was in no 
sense a Hindoo, kept nevertheless a Hindoo saint for political 
purposes, and gave him the foremost position in his train. "WHien 
the Emperor was beginning to fortify Futtehpore Sikri, where 
he lived, the saint sent for him, and said that the work must be 
stopped, as the noise disturbed him at his prayers. The Emperor 
offered him new rooms away from the site of the proposed 



438 GREATER BRITAIX. [chap. v. 

walls, but the saint replied that, whether Akbar went on with 
his works or no, he should leave Futtehpore. To pacify him, 
Akbar founded Agra, and dismantled Futtehpore Sikri. 

From the census it appears that there are in the North-West 
Provinces no less than twenty-two newspapers under Govern- 
ment inspection, of which five are published at Agra. The 
circulation of these papers is extremely small, and as the 
Government itself takes 3500 of the 12,000 copies which they 
issue, its hold over them, without exertion of force, is great. 
Of the other 8500, 8000 go to native and 500 to European 
subscribers. All the native papers are skilful at catering for 
their double public, but those which are printed half in a native 
tongue and half in English stand in the first rank for unscrupu- 
lousness. One of these papers gave, while I was in India, some 
French speech in abuse of the English. This was headed on 
the English side ^'' Interesti7ig Account of the English," but on 
the native side," Excellent KcaoMriX. of the English." The "English 
correspondence," and English news of these native papers is so 
absurdly concocted by the editors out of their own brains, that 
it is a question whether it would not be advisable to send them 
weekly a column of European news, and even to withhold 
Government patronage from them unless they gave it room, 
leaving them to qualify and explain the facts as best they could. 
Their favourite statements are that Russia is going to invade 
India forthwith, that ^the Queen has become a Catholic or a 
Mohamedan, and that the whole population of India is to be 
converted to Christianity by force. The external appearanca 
of the native papers is sometimes as comical as their matter. 
The Umritsur Commercial Advertiser ^ of which nothing is 
English but the title, gives, for instance, the time-tables of the 
Punjaub Railway on its back sheet. The page, which is a mere 
maze of dots and crooked lines, has at the top a cut of a railway 
train, in which guards apparently cocked-hatted, but probably 
meant to be wearing pith helmets, are represented sitting on 
the top of each carriage with their legs dangling down in front 
of the windows. 

Neither Christianity nor native reformed religions make 
much show in the North Western census. The Christians are 
strongest in the South of India, the Hindoo reformers in the 



CHAP V.J CASTE. 439 

Punjaub. The Sikhs themselves, and the Kookhas, NIrunkarees, 
Goolab Dasseas, Naukeeka-punth, and many other Punjaubee 
sects, all show more or less hostility to caste ; but in the 
North-West Provinces caste distinctions flourish, although in 
reality they have no doubt lost strength. The high-caste men 
are beginning to find their caste a drawback to their success 
in life, and are given to concealing it. Just as with ourselves 
kings go incognito when they travel for pleasure, so the Bengal 
sepoy hides his Brahminical string under his cloth, in order 
that he may be sent on foreign service without its being known 
that by crossing the seas he wdll lose caste. 

Judging by the unanimous opinion of the native press on 
the doings of the Maharajahs of Bombay, and on the licen- 
tiousness of the Koolin Brahmins, many of our civilians have 
come to think that Hindooism in its present shape has lost the 
support of a large number of the more intelligent Hindoos, but 
there is little reason to believe that this is the case. In Calcutta 
the Church of Hindoo Deists is gaining ground, and one of 
their leaders is said to have met with some successes during a 
recent expedition to the North- West, but of this there is no 
proof. The little regard that many high-caste natives show for 
caste, except as a matter of talk, merely means that caste is less 
an affair of religion than of custom, but that it is a matter 
of custom does not show that its force is slight ; on the con- 
trary, custom is the lord of India. 

The success of Mohamedanism in India should show that 
caste has never been strong except so far as caste is custom. 
It is true that the peasants in Orissa starved by the side of 
the sacred cows, but this was custom too : any one man killing the 
cow would have been at once killed by his also starving 
neighbours for breaking custom ; but once change the custom 
by force, and there is no tendency to return to the former state 
of things. The Portuguese and the Mohamedans alike made 
converts by compulsion, yet when the pressure was removed, 
there was no return to the earlier faith. Of the nature of caste 
we had an excellent example in the behaviour of the troopers 
of a Bengal cavalry regiment three weeks before the outbreak 
of the mutiny of 1857, when they said that for their part they 
knew that their cartridges were not greased with the fat of 



440 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. v. 

COWS, but that, as they looked as though they were, it came to 
the same thing, for they should lose caste if their friends saw 
them touch the cartridges in question. 

It was the cry of infringement of custom that was raised 
against us by the mutineers: " They aim at subverting our insti- 
tutions ; they have put down the suttee of the Brahmins, the 
infanticide of the Marattas, caste and adoption are despised ; 
they aim at destroying all our religious customs," was the most 
powerful cry that could be raised. It is one against which we 
shall never be wholly safe ; but it is the custom and not the 
religion which is the people's especial care. 

There is one point in which caste forms a singular difficulty 
in our way, which has not yet been brought sufficiently home 
to us. The comparatively fair treatment vv^hich is now extended 
to the low-caste and no-caste men is itself an insult to the 
high-caste nobility ; and while the no-caste men care little how 
we treat them provided we pay them well, and the bunnya, or 
shop-keeping class, encouraged by the improvement, cry out 
loudly that the Government wrongs them in not treating them 
as Europeans, the high-caste men are equally disgusted with 
our good treatment both of middle-class and inferior Hindoos. 
These things are stumbling-blocks in our way chiefly because 
no amount of acquaintance with the various phases of caste 
feeling is sufficient to bring home its importance to English- 
men. The Indian is essentially the caste man, the Saxon as 
characteristically the no-caste man, and it is difficult to produce 
a mutual understanding. Just as in England the people are 
too democratic for the Government, in India the Government 
is too democratic for the people. 

Although caste has hitherto been but little shaken, there are 
forces at work which must in time produce the most grave 
results. The return to their homes of natives who have emi- 
grated and worked at sugar-planting in Mauritius, and coffee- 
growing in Ceylon, mixing with negroes and with Europeans, will 
gradually aid in the subversion of caste distinctions, and the 
Parsees will give their help towards the creation of a healthier 
feeling. The young men of the merchant-class — ^who are all 
pure deists — set an example of doing away with caste distinc- 
tions which will gradually affect the whole population of the 



CHAP, v.] CASTE. ■ 441 

towns ; railways will act upon the labourers and agriculturists ; a 
closer intercourse with Europe will possibly go hand in hand 
with universal instruction in the English tongue, and the 
indirect results of Christian teaching will continue to be, as they 
have been, great. 

The positive results of missionary work in India have hitherto 
been small. Taking the census as a guide, in the district of 
Mooradabad we find but 107 Christians in 1,100,000 people; 
in Budaon, 64 *' Christians, Europeans, and Eurasians " (half- 
castes out of 900,000 people; in Bareilly, 137 native Christians 
in a million and a half of people ; in Shajehanpoor, 98 in a 
million people ; in Turrai, none in a million people ; in Etah, 
no native Christians, and only twenty Europeans to 614,000 
people ; in the Banda district, thirteen native Christians out of 
three quarters of a milhon of people; in Goruckpoor, 100 
native Christians out of three and a half millions of people. 
Not to multiply instances, this proportion is preserved through- 
out the whole of the districts, and the native Christians in the 
North- West are proved to form but an insignificant fraction of 
the population. 

The number of native Christians in India is extremely small. 
Twenty-three societies, having three hundred Protestant mis- 
sionary stations, more than three hundred native missionary 
churches, and five hundred European preachers, costingwith their 
assistants two hunded thousand pounds a year, profess only to 
show a hundred and fifty thousand converts, of whom one-seventh 
are communicants. The majority of the converts who are not 
communicants are converts only upon paper, and it may be 
said that of the real native non-Catholic Christians there are not 
in India more than 40,000, of whom half are to be found among 
the devil-worshippers of Madras. Some of the Coles of Chota- 
nagpore became Christians on the Aground that as witches had 
no power over Christians, Christianity must be the best fetish. 
The so-called " aboriginal " hill-tribes, having no elaborate re- 
ligious system of their own, are not tied down to the creed of 
their birth in the same way as are Mohamedans and Hindoos, 
among whom our missionaries make no way whatever. The 
native Protestant's position is a fearful one, except in such 
a city as Madras, for he wholly loses caste, and becomes an 



442 GREATER BEITAIN. [chap. v. 

outlaw from his people. The native Catholic continues to be a 
caste man, and sometimes an idol-worshipper, and the priests 
have made a million converts in Southern India. 

Besides revealing the fewness of the native Christians, the 
North-Western census has shown us plainly the weakness of the 
Europeans. In the district of Mooradabad, 1,100,000 people 
are ruled by thirty-eight Europeans. In many places two 
Europeans watch over 200,000 people. The Eurasians are 
about as numerous as the Europeans, to which class they may 
for some purposes be regarded as belonging, for the natives 
reject their society, and refuse them a place in every caste. 
The Eurasians are a much-despised race, the butt of every 
Indian story, but as a community they are not to be ranked 
high. That they should be ill-educated, vain, and cringing, is 
perhaps only what we might expect of persons placed in their 
difficult position ; nevertheless, that they are so tends to lessen^ 
in spite of our better feelings, the pity that we should otherwise 
extend towards them. 

The census had not only its revelations, but its results. One 
effect of the census-taking is to check the practice of infanticide, 
by pointing out to the notice of our officers the castes and the 
districts in which it exists. The deaths of three or four hundred 
children are annually credited to the wolves in the Umritsur dis- 
trict of the Punjaub alone, but it is remarked that the " wolves " 
pick out the female infants. The great disproportion of the sexes 
is itself partly to be explained as the result of infanticide. 

One weighty drawback to our influence upon Hindoo morals, 
is that in the case of many abuses we legislate without effect, 
our laws being evaded where they are outwardly obeyed. The 
practice of infanticide exists in all parts of India, but especially 
in Rajpootana, and the girls are killed chiefly in order to save 
the cost of marrying them — or, rather, of buying husbands for 
them. Now, we have " suppressed " infanticide — which means 
that children are smothered or starved, instead of being exposed. 
It is no easy task to bring about reforms in the customs of the 
people of India. 

The many improvements in the moral condition of the people 
which the census chronicles are steps in a great march. Those 
who have known India long are aware that a remarkable change 



CHAP, v.] • CASTE. 443 

has come over the country in the last few years. Small as have 
been the positive visible results of Christian teaching, the indirect 
effects have been enormous. Among the Sikhs and Marattas, 
a spirit of reflection, of earnest thought, unusual in natives, has 
been aroused; in Bengal it has taken the form of pure deism, 
but then Bengal is not India. The spirit rather than the doc- 
trinal teaching of Christianity has been imbibed : a love of truth 
appeals more to the feelings of the upright natives than do the 
whole of the nine-and-thirty Articles. Here, as elsewhere, the 
natives look to deeds, not words ; the example of a Frere is 
worth the teaching of a hundred missionaries, painstaking and 
earnest though they be. 



444 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vi. 



CHAPTER VI. 

MOHAMEDAN CiTIES. 

Through Mirzapore, Allahabad, and Futtehpore, I passed on 
to Cawnpore, spending but little time at Allahabad ; for though 
the city is strategically important, there is in it but little to be 
seen. Like all spots of the confluence of rivers, Allahabad is 
sacred with the Hindoo ; for it stands, they say, at the meet- 
ing-point of no less than three great streams — the Ganges, the 
Jumna, and a river of the spirit-land. To us poor pagans, the 
third stream is invisible ; not so to the faithful. Catching a 
glimpse of Marochetti's statue at the Cawnpore well, as I 
hurried through that city, I diverged from the East Indian 
Railway, and took dawk-carriage to Lucknow. 

As compared with other Indian cities, the capital of Oude is 
a town to be seen in driving rather than in walking ; the general 
effects are superior in charm and beauty to the details, and the 
vast size of the city makes mere sight-seeing a work of diffi- 
culty. More populous before 1857 than either Calcutta or 
Bombay, it is still twice as large as Liverpool. Not only, how- 
ever, is Lucknow the most perfect of the modern or Italianised 
Oriental towns, but there are in it several buildings that have 
each the charm of an architecture special to itself Of these, 
the Martiniere is the most singular, and it looks like what it is 
— the freak of a wealthy madman. Its builder was General 
Martine, a Frenchman in the service of the Kings of Oude. 
Not far behind the Martiniere is the Dilkousha — a fantastic 
specimen of an Oriental hunting-lodge. The ordinary show- 
building of the place, the Kaiser-Bagh, or Palace of the Kings 
of Oude, is a paltry place enough, but there is a certain 
grandeur in the view of the great Imaumbara and the Hoose- 



CHAP. VI.] MOHAMET) AN CITIES. 445 

inabad from a point whence the two piles form to the eye but 
one. The great Imaumbara suffered terribly in 1858 from the 
wanton destruction which our troops committed everywhere 
during the war of the mutiny. Had they confined themselves 
to outrages such as these, however, but little could have been 
said against the conduct of the war. There is too much fear 
that the English, unless held in check, exhibit a singularly 
strong disposition towards cruelty, wherever they have a weak 
enemy to meet. 

The stories of the Indian mutiny and of the Jamaica riot are 
but two out of many — two that we happen to have heard ; but 
the Persian war in 1857 and the last of the Chinese campaigns 
are not without their records of deliberate barbarity and wrong. 
From the first officer of one of the Peninsular and Oriental 
steamers, which was employed in carrying troops up the Eu- 
phrates during the Persian war, I heard a story that is the type 
of many such. A Persian drummer-boy of about ten years 
old was seen bathing from the bank one morning by the officers 
on deck. Bets were made as to the chance of hitting him 
with an Enfield rifle, and one of the betters killed him at the 
first shot. 

It is not only in war-time that our cruelty comes out j it is 
often seen in trifles during peace. Even a traveller, indeed, 
becomes so soon used to see the natives wronged in every way 
by people of quiet manner and apparent kindness of disposition, 
that he ceases to record the cases. In Madras roads, for 
instance, I saw a fruit-seller hand up some limes to a lower-deck 
port, just as we were weighing anchor. Three Anglo-Indians 
(men who had been out before) asked in chorus " How much ?" 
" One quarter rupee." " Too much." And, without more ado, 
paying nothing, they pelted the man with his own limes, of 
which he lost more than half. In Ceylon, near Bentotte rest- 
house, a native child offered a handsome cowrie (of a kind 
worth in Australia about five shillings, and certainly worth 
something in Ceylon) to the child of a Mauritius coffee-planter 
who was travelling with us to Columbo, himself an old Indian 
officer. The white child took it, and would not give it up. 
The native child cried for money, or to have his shell back, 
but the mother of the white child exclaimed, " You be hanged ; 



446 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vi. 

it's worth nothing ;" and off came the shell with us in the dawk. 
Such are the small but galling wrongs inflicted daily upon the 
Indian natives. It was a maxim of the Portuguese Jesuits that 
men who live long among Asiatics seldom fail to learn their 
vices, but our older civilians treat the natives with strict justice, 
and Anglo-Indian ladies who have been reared in the country 
are generally kind to their own servants, if somewhat harsh 
towards other natives. It is those who have been in the country 
from five to ten years, and especially soldiers, who treat the 
natives badly. Such men I have heard exclaim that the new 
penal code has revolutionised the country. " Formerly," they 
say, " you used to send a man to a police-officer or a magistrate 

with a note : — ' My dear . Please give the bearer twenty 

lashes,' but now the magistrates are afraid to act, and your 
servant can have you fined for beating him." In spite of the 
lamentations of Anglo-Indians over the good old days, I 
noticed in all the hotels in India the significant notice, " Gen- 
tlemen are earnestly requested not to strike the servants." 

The jokes of a people against themselves are not worth 
much, but may be taken in aid of other evidence. The two 
favourite Anglo-Indian stories are that of the native who, being 
asked his religion, said, " Me Christian — me get drunk like 
massa ; " and that of the young officer who, learning Hindo- 
stanee in 1858, had the difference between the negative " ne " 
and the particle "ne" explained to him by the moonshee, 
when he exclaimed : " Dear me ! I hanged lots of natives last 
year for admitting that they had not been in their villages for 
months. I suppose they meant to say that they had not left 
their villages for months." It is certain that in the suppression 
of the mutiny hundreds of natives were hanged by Queen's 
officers who, unable to speak a word of any native language, 
could neither understand evidence nor defence. 
• It is in India, when listening to a mess-table conversation on 
the subject of looting, that we begin to remember our descent 
from Scandinavian sea-king robbers. Centuries of education 
have not purified the blood : our men in India can hardly set 
eyes upon a native prince or a Hindoo palace before they cry, 
" What a place to break up r " What a fellow to loot r When 
I said to an officer who had been stationed at Secrole in the 



CHAP. VI.] MOHAMEDAN CITIES. 447 

early days of the mutiny, " I suppose you were afraid that the 
Benares people would have attacked you," his answer was, 
" Well, for my part, I rather hoped they would, because then 
we should have thrashed them and looted the city. It hadn't 
been looted for two hundred years." 

Those who doubt that Indian military service makes soldiers 
careless of men's lives, reckless as to the rights of property, 
and disregardful of human dignity, can hardly remember the 
letters which reached home in 1857, in which an officer in high 
command during the march upon Cawnpore reported, " Good 

bag to-day ; pohshed off rebels," it being borne in mind 

that the " rebels " thus hanged or blown from guns were not 
taken in arms, but villagers apprehended " on suspicion." 
During this march, atrocities were committed in the burning of 
villages, and massacre of innocent inhabitants, at which Mo- 
hamed Togluk himself would have stood ashamed, and it would 
be to contradict all history to assert that a succession of such 
deeds would not prove fatal to our liberties at home. 

The European officers of native regiments, and many officers 
formerly in the Company's service, habitually show great kind- 
ness to the natives, but it is the benevolent kindness of the 
master for a favourite slave, of the superior for men immeasur- 
ably beneath him ; there is little of the feeling which a common 
citizenship should bestow, little of that equality of man which 
Christianity would seem to teach, and which our Indian Govern- 
ment has for some years favoured. 

At Lucknow I saw the Residency, and at Cawnpore, on my 
return to the East Indian Railway, the entrenchments which 
were, each of them, the scene in 1857 of those defences against 
the mutineers generally styled " glorious " or " heroic," though 
made by men fighting with ropes about their necks. The suc- 
cessful defences of the fort at Arrah and of the Lucknow 
Residency were rather testimonies to the wonderful fighting 
powers of the English than to their courage, — for cowards 
would fight when the alternative was, fight or die. As far as 
Gude was concerned, the "rebellion" of 1857 seems to have 
been rather a war than a mutiny ; but the habits of the native 
princes would probably have led them to have acted as trea- 
cherously at Lucknow in the case of a surrender as did the 



448 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vi. 

Nana at Cawnpore, and our officers wisely determined that in 
no event would they treat for terms. What is to be regretted 
is that we as conquerors should have shown the Oude insur- 
gents no more mercy than they would have shown to us, and 
that we should have made use of the pretext that the rising 
Avas a mere mutiny of our native troops, as an excuse for hang- 
ing in cold blood the agriculturists of Oude. Whatever the 
duplicity of their rulers, whatever the provocation to annexation 
may have been, there can be no doubt that the revolution in 
the land-laws, set on foot by us, resulted in the offer of a career 
as native policemen or railway ticket-clerks to men whose 
ancestors were warriors and knights when ours wore woad ; 
and we are responsible before mankind for having treated as 
flagrant treason and mutiny a legitimate war on the part of the 
nobility of Oude. In the official papers of the Government of 
the North-West Provinces, the so-called " mutiny " is styled 
more properly " a grievous civil war." 

There is much reason to fear, not that the mutiny will be too 
long remembered, but that it will be too soon forgotten. Ten 
years ago, Monghyr was an ash-heap, Cawnpore a name of 
horror, Delhi a stronghold of armed rebels, yet now we can 
travel without change of cars through peaceful and prosperous 
Monghyr and Cawnpore — a thousand and twenty miles — in 
forty hours, and find at the end of our journey that shaded 
boulevards have already taken the place of the walls of Delhi. 

Quitting the main line of the East India Railvv^ay at Toondla 
Junction, I passed over a newly-made branch road to Agra. 
The line was but lately opened, and birds without number sat 
upon the telegraph-posts, and were seemingly too astonished to 
fly away from the train, while, on the open barrens, herds of 
Indian antelopes grazed fearlessly, and took no notice of us 
when we passed. 

Long before we entered Akbarabad, as the city should be 
called, by the great new bridge across the Jumna, I had sighted 
in the far distance the majestic, shining dome of the famed Taj 
Mahal ; but when arrived within the city, I first visited the 
citadel and ramparts. The fort and palace of Akbar are the 
Moslem creed in stone. Without — turned towards the un- 
believer and the foe — the far-famed triple walls, frowning one 



CHAP. VI.] 310EAMEDAN CITIES. 449 

above the other with the frown that a hill fanatic wears before 
he strikes the infidel ; within is the secure paradise of the 
believing " Emperor of the world " — delicious fountains pouring 
into basins of the whitest marble, beds of rose and myrtle, 
balconies and pavilions ; part of the zenana, or women's wing, 
overhanging the river, and commanding the distant snow-dome 
of the Taj. Within, too, the " Motee Musjid"—" Pearl of 
Mosques " in fact as well as name — a marble-clqistered court, 
to which an angel architect could not add a stone, nor snatch 
one from it without spoiling all. These for believers ; for non- 
believers the grim old Saracenic " Hall of the Seat of Judgment." 
The palace, except the mosque, which is purity itself, is over- 
laid with a crust of gems. There is one famed chamber — a 
woman's bath-house — the roof and sides of which are covered 
with tiny silver-mounted mirrors, placed at such angles as to 
reflect to infinity the figures of those who stand within the 
bath ; and a court is near at hand, paved with marble squares 
in black and white, over which Akbar and his vizier used to sit, 
and gravely play at draughts with dancing girls for " pieces." 

On the river bank, a mile from Akbar's palace, in the centre 
of a vast garden entered through the noblest gateways in the 
world, stands the Taj Mahal, a terrace rising in dazzling white- 
ness from a black mass of cypresses, and bearing four lofty, 
delicate minars, and the central pile that gleams like an Alp 
against the deep-blue sky — minars, terrace, tomb, all of spotless 
marble, and faultless shape. Its Persian builders named the 
Taj " the palace floating in the air." 

Out of the fierce heat and blazing sunlight you enter into chill 
and darkness, but soon begin to see the hollow dome growing 
into form above your head, and the tomb itself — that of Noor 
Mahal, the favourite queen of Shah Jehan — before you, and 
beside it her husband's humbler grave. Though within and 
without the Taj is white, still here you find the walls profusely 
jewelled, and the purity retained. Flowers are pictured on 
every block in mosaic of cinnamon-stone, cornelian, turquoise, 
amethyst, and emerald ; the corridors contain the whole Koran, 
inlaid in jet-black stone, yet the interior as a whole exceeds in 
chastity the spotlessness of the outer dome. Oriental, it is not 
barbaric, and a sweet melancholy is the effect the Taj produces 

2 G 



45 o GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vi. 

on the mind, when seen by day ; in the still moonlight, the form 
is too mysterious to be touching. 

In a Persian manuscript, there still remains a catalogue of the 
prices of the gems made use of in the building of the Taj, and 
of the places from which they came. Among those named are 
coral from Arabia, sapphires from Moldavia, amethysts from 
Persia, crystal from China, turquoises from Thibet, diamonds 
from Bundelcund, and lapis-lazuli from Ceylon. The stones 
were presents or tribute to the Emperor, and the master masons 
came mostly from Constantinople and Bagdad — a fact which 
should be remembered when we are discussing the intellectual 
capacity of the Bengal Hindoos. That a people who paint their 
cows pink with green spots, and their horses orange or bright 
red, should be the authors of the Pearl Mosque and the Taj, 
would be too wonderful for our belief, but the Mohamedan 
conquerors brought with them the chosen artists of the Moslem 
world. The contrast between the Taj and the Monkey Temple 
at Benares reminds one of that between a Cashmere and a 
Norwich shawl. 

It is not at Agra alone that we meet the works of Mogul 
emperors. Much as we have ourselves done in building roads 
and bridges, there are many parts of Upper India where the 
traces of the Moslem are still more numerous than are at pre- 
sent those of the later conquerors of the unfortunate Hindoos. 
Mosques, forts, conduits, bridges, gardens — all the works of the 
Moguls are both solid and magnificent, and it was with almost 
reverential feelings that I made my pilgrimage to the tomb at 
Secundra of the great Emperor Akbar, grandfather of Shah 
Jehan, son of Hoomayoon, and founder of Agra city. 

It is to be remarked that the Mohamedans in India make a 
considerable show for their small numbers. Of the great cities 
of India, the three Presidency towns are English ; and the three 
gigantic cities of Delhi, Agra, and Lucknow, chiefly Mohamedan. 
Benares alone is a Hindoo city, and even in Benares the Mo- 
hamedans have their temples. All the great buildings of India 
are Mohamedan ; so are all the great works that are not Eng- 
lish. Yet even in the Agra district, the Mohamedans are only 
one-twelfth of the population, but they live chiefly in the towns. 

The history of the Mogul empire of India from the time of 



CHAP. VI.] MOHAMEDAN CITIES. 45 r 

the conquest of the older empire by Tamerlane in the fourteenth 
(Century, and the forced conversion to Mohamedanism of a vast 
number of Hindoos, and that of Akbar's splendour and enor- 
mous power down to the transportation of the last emperor in 
1857 to Rangoon, and the shooting of his sons in a dry ditch by 
Captain Hodson, is one for us to ponder carefully. Those who 
know what we have done in India, say that even in our codes 
— and they- are allowed to be our best claim to the world's 
applause — we fall short of Akbar's standard. 

Delhi, the work of Shah Jehan, founder of the Taj and the 
Pearl Mosque, was built by him in a wilderness, as^was Agra by 
the Emperor Akbar. We who have seen the time that has 
passed since its foundation by Washington before the capital of 
the United States has grown out of the village shape, cannot 
deny that the Mogul emperors, if they were despots, were at 
least tyrants possessed of imperial energy. Akbar built Agra 
twenty or thirty miles from Futtehpore Sikri, his former capital ; 
but Jehan had the harder task of forcing his people to quit an 
earlier site not five miles from modern Delhi, while Akbar 
merely moved his palace, and let the people follow, 

Delhi suffered so much at our hands during the storm in 
1857, and has suffered so much since in the way of Napoleonic 
boulevards intended to prevent the necessity of storming it 
again, that it must be much changed from what it was before 
the war, The walls which surround the city are nearly as grand 
as those of the fort at Agra, and the gate towers are very 
Gibraltars of brick and stone, as we found to our cost when we 
battered the Cashmere Gate in 1857. The palace and the 
Motee Musjid are extremely fine, but inferior to their namesakes 
at Agra; and the Jumna Musjid — reputed the most beautiful, 
as it is the largest, mosque in the world — impressed me only 
by its size. The view, however, from its minars is one of the 
whole North-West. The vast city becomes an ant-heap, and 
you instinctively peer out into space, and try to discern the sea 
towards Calcutta or Bombay. 

The historical memories that attach to Delhi differ from those 
that we associate with the name of Agra. There is little plea- 
sure in the contemplation of the zenana, where the miserable 
old man, the last of the Moguls, dawdled away his years. 

2 G 2 



452 GEEATER BRITAIN. . [chap. vii. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Simla. 

After visiting Nicholson's tomb at the Cashmere Gate, I en- 
tered my one-horse dawk — the regulation carriage of India — 
and set off for Kurnaul and Simla, passing between the sand- 
hills, gravel-pits, and ruined mosques through which the rebel 
cavalry made their famous sortie upon our camp. It was even- 
ing when we started, and as the dawk-gharrees are so arranged 
that you can lie with comfort at full-length, but cannot sit with- 
out misery, I brought my canvas bag into service as a pillow, 
and was soon asleep. 

When I woke we had stopped ; and when I drew the sliding 
shutter that does duty for door and window, and pisered out 
into the darkness, I discovered that there was no horse in the 
shafts, and that my driver and his horse-syce — or groom — were 
smoking their hubble-bubbles at a well in the company of a 
passing friend. By making free use of the strongest language 
that my dictionary contained, I prevailed upon the men to put 
in a fresh horse, but starting was a different matter. The horse 
refused to budge an inch, except, indeed, backwards or 
sideways towards the ditch. Six grooms came running from 
the stable, and placed themselves one at each wheel, and 
one on each side of the horse, while many boys pushed 
behind. At a signal from the driver, the four wheel- 
men threw their whole weight on the spokes, and one of the 
men at the horse's head held up the obstinate brute's off fore- 
leg, so that he was fairly run off the ground, and forced to make 
a start, which he did with a violent plunge, for which all the 
grooms were, however, well prepared. As they yelled with 
triumph, we dashed along for some twenty yards, then swerved 
sideways, and came to a dead stop. Again and again the start- 



CHAP. VII.] SIMLA. 453 

ing process was repeated, till at last the horse \fent off at a 
gallop, which carried us to the end of the stage. This is the 
only form of starting known to up-country horses, as I soon 
found ; but sometimes even this ceremony fails to start the horse, 
and twice in the Delhi-to-Kalka journey Ave lost a quarter of an 
hour over horses, and had finally to get others from the stable. 

About midnight we reached a Government bungalow, or road- 
side inn, where I was to sup, and live minutes produced a 
chicken curry which, in spite of its hardness, was disposed of in 
as many more. Meanwhile a storm had come rumbling and 
roaring across the skies, and when I went to the door to start, 
the bungalow butler and cook pointed to the gharree, and told 
me that driver and horse were gone. Not wishing the bungalow 
men to discover how small was my stock of Hindostanee, I paid 
careful attention to their conversation, and looked up each time 
that I heard " sahib," as I knew that then they must be talking 
about me. Seeing this, they seemed to agree that I was a 
thorough Hindostanee scholar, but too proud to answer when 
they spoke. Whilst they were humbly requesting that I would 
bow to the storm and sleep in the bungalow, which was filled 
with twittering sparrows, waked by the thunder or the lights, I 
was reading my dictionary by the faint glimmer of the cocoa-nut 
oil-lamp, and trying to find out how I was to declare that I in- 
sisted on going on at once. When at last I hit upon my phrase, 
the storm was over, and the butler soon found both horse and 
driver. After this adventure, my Hindostanee improved fast. 

A remarkable misapprehension prevails in England concern- 
ing the languages of India. The natives of India, we are inclined 
to believe, speak Hindostanee, which is the language of India 
as English is that of Britain. The truth is that there are in 
India a multitude of languages, of which Hindostanee is not 
even one. Besides the great tongues, Urdu, Maratti, and Tamil, 
there are dozens, if not hundreds, of local languages, and innu- 
merable dialects of each. Hindostanee is a camp language, 
which contains many native words, but which also is largely 
composed of imported Arabic and Persian words, and which is 
not without specimens of English and Portuguese. " Saboon," 
for soap, is the latter; "glassie," for a tumbler, "putti," for a 
bottle, " kobi," for a cabbage, " rikab," for a stirrup, and " istubul," 



454 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. vii. 

for a stable, the former : but almost every common English 
phrase and English word of command is in a certain measure 
pait of the Hindostanee tongue. Some terms have been in- 
geniously perverted ; for instance, " Who comes there ?" has 
become " Hookum dar ?" " Stand at ease !" is changed to " Tun- 
del tis 1" " gymnasium " to " zim-khanah," and " Present arms !" 
to " Furyunt ram !" indeed, it is hard to say what is Hindostanee 
and what is not ; — " sigya," gin, is derived from the name of an 
English distilling firm, but it is a recognised Hindostanee word. 
The Hindostanee name for a European lady is " mem sahib," 
a feminine formed from " sahib " — lord, or European — by pre- 
fixing to it the English servants' " mum," or corruption of " ma- 
dam." Some pure Hindostanee words have a comical sound 
enough to English ears, as "hookm," an order, pronounced 
"hook'em:" "misri," sugar, which sounds like "misery;" "top," 
fever ; " molly," a gardener ; and " dolly," a bundle of vegetables. 

Dawk travelling in the Punjaub is by no means unpleasant ; 
by night you sleep soundly, and by day there is no lack of life 
in the mere traffic on the road, while the general scene is' full of 
charm. Here and there are serais, or corrals, built by the 
Mogul emperors or by the British Government for the use of 
native travellers. Our word " caravansery " is properly "caravan- 
serai," an enclosure for the use of those travelling in caravans. 
The keeper of the serai supplies water, provender, and food, 
and at night the serais along the road glow with the cooking 
fires and resound with the voices of thousands of natives, who 
when on journeys never seem to sleep. Throughout the 
plains of India, the high roads pass villages, serais, police- 
stations, and groups of trees at almost equal intervals. The 
space between clump and clump is generally about three miles, 
and in this distance you never see a house, so compact are the 
Indian villages. The North-West Provinces are the most 
densely-peopled countries of the world, yet between village and 
village you often see no trace of man, while jackals and wild 
blue-cows roam about as freely as though the country were an 
untrodden wilderness. 

Each time you reach a clump of banyans, tamarind and tulip 
trees, you find the same tenants of its shades : village, police- 
station, Government posting-stable, and serai are always enclosed 



CHAP. VII.] SIMLA. 455 

within its limits. The villages are fortified with lofty walls of 
mud or brick, as are the numerous police-stations along the 
road, where the mihtary constabulary, in their dark-blue tunics, 
yellow trousers, and huge puggrees of bright red, rise up from 
sleep or hookah as you pass, and, turning out with tulwars and 
rifles, perform the military salute — due in India to the white 
face from all native troops. Your skin heare is your patent of 
aristocracy and your passport, all in one. 

It is not only by the police and troops that you are saluted ; 
the natives all salaam to you — except mere coolies, who do not 
tliink themselves worthy even to offer a salute — and many 
Anglo-Indians refuse to return their bow. Every Englishman 
ir India ought to act as though he were an ambassador of the 
Queen and people, and regulate accordingly his conduct in the 
most trifling things ; but too often the low bow and humble 
" Salaam Sahib " is not acknowledged even by a curt " Salaam." 

In the drier portions of the country, women were busy with 
knives digging up httle roots of grass for horse-food ; and four 
or five times a day a great bugling would be heard and answered 
by my driver, while the mail-cart shot by us at full speed. The 
astonishment v/ith which I looked upon the Indian plains grew 
even stronger as I advanced up country. Not only. is bush scarce, 
and forest never seen, but where there is jungle, it is of the 
thinnest and least tropical kind. It would be harder to traverse, 
on horse or foot, the thinnest coppice in the south of England 
than the densest jungle in the plain country of all India. 

Both in the villages and in the desert portions of the road, 
the ground-squirrels galloped in troops before the dawk, and 
birds without number hopped fearlessly beside us as we passed ; 
hoopoes, blue-jays, and minas were the commonest, but there were 
many paddy-birds and graceful golden egrets in the lower grounds. 

Between Delhi and Kurnaul were many ruins, now green 
with the pomegranate leaf, now scarlet with the bloom of the 
peacock-tree, and, about the ancient villages, acre after acre of 
plantain -garden, irrigated by the conduits of the Mohamedan 
conquerors ; at last, Kurnaul itself — a fortified town — seen 
through a forest of date, wild mango, and banyan, with patches 
of wheat about it, and strings of laden camels winding along the 
dusty road. After a bheestie had poured a skinful of water over 



456 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vii. 

me, I set off again for Kalka, halting in the territory of the 
Puttiala Rajah to see his gardens at Pinjore, and then passed 
on towards the base of the Himalayan foot-hills. The wheat 
harvest was in progress in the Kalka country, and the girls, 
reaping with the sickle, and carrying away the sheaves upon 
their heads, bore themselves gracefully, as Hindoo women ever 
do, and formed a contrast to the coarse old landowners as these 
rode past, each followed by his pipe-bearer and his retinue. 

A Goorkha battalion and a Thibetan goat-train had just 
entered Kalka when I reached it, and the confusion was such 
that I started at once in a jampan up the sides of the brown 
and desolate hills. A jampan, called tonjon in Madras, is an 
arm-chair in shafts, and built more lightly than a sedan ; it is 
carried at a short trot by four men, while another four, and a 
mate or chief, make their way up the hills before you, and meet 
you here and there to relieve guard. The hire of the jampan 
and nine men is less than that of a pony and groom — a curious 
illustration of the cheapness of labour in the East. When you 
first reach India, this cheapness is a standing wonder. At your 
hotel at Calcutta you are asked, " You wish boy pull punkah all 
night ? Boy pull punkah all day and all night for two annas " 
(2,0). On some parts of the railway lines, where there is also a 
good road, the natives find it cheaper to travel by palanqueen 
than to ride in a third-class railway carriage. It is cheaper in 
Calcutta to be carried by four men in a palki than to ride in a 
" second-class gharree," or very bad cab ; and the streets of the 
city are invariably watered by hand by bheesties with skins. 
The key to Indian politics lies in these facts. 

At Wilson's at Calcutta, the rule of the hotel obliges one to 
hire a kitmutghar, who waits at table. This I did for the 
magnificent wage of iid. a day, out of which Cherry — the 
nearest phonetic spelling of my man's name — of course fed and 
kept himself I will do him the justice to add that he managed to 
make about another shilling a day out of me, and that he always 
brought me small change in copper, on the chance that I should 
give it him. Small as seemed these wages, I could have hired 
him for one-fifth the rate that I have named had I been ready 
to retain him in my service for a month or two. Wages in 
India are somewhat raised by the practice of dustooree — a 



CHAP. VII.] SIMLA. 45 7 

custom by which every native, high or low, takes toll of all 
money that passes through his hands. My first introduction to 
this institution struck me forcibly, though afterwards I came to 
look upon it as tranquilly as old Indians do. It was in the 
gardens of the Taj, where, to relieve myself from importunity, I 
had bought a photograph of the dome : a native servant of the 
hotel, who accompanied me much against my will, and who, 
being far more ignorant of English than I was of Hindostanee, 
was of absolutely no use, I had at last succeeded in warning off 
from my side, but directly I bought the photograph for half a 
rupee, he rushed upon the seller, and claimed one-fourth of the 
price, or two annas, as his share, I having transgressed his privi- 
lege in buying directly instead of through him as intermediary. 
I remonstrated, but to my amazement the seller paid the money 
quietly, and evidently looked on me as a meddling sort of fellow 
enough for interfering with the institution of dustooree. Cus- 
toms, after all, are much the same throughout the world. Our 
sportsmen follow the habit of Confucius, whose disciples two or 
three thousand years ago proclaimed that " he angled, but did 
not use a net; he shot, but not at birds perching;" our servants, 
perhaps, are not altogether innocent of dustooree. However 
much wages may be supplemented by dustooree, they are low 
enough to allow of the keeping of a tribe of servants by persons 
of moderate incomes. A small family at Simla " require " three 
body servants, two cooks, one butler, two grooms, two gardeners, 
two messengers, two nurses, two washermen, two water-carriers, 
thirteen jampan-men, one sweeper, one lamp-cleaner, and one 
boy, besides the European lady's maid, or thirty-five in all ; but 
if wages were doubled, perhaps fewer men would be "absolutely 
needed." At the house where I stayed at Simla, ten jampan- 
men and two gardeners were supposed to be continuously 
employed in a tiny flower-garden ; round the house. To a 
European fresh from the temperate climates there is something 
irksome in the restraint produced by the constant presence of 
servants in every corner of an Indian house. To pull off one's 
own socks or pour out the water into the basin for oneself 
becomes a much-longed-for luxury. It is far from pleasant to 
have three or four natives squatting in front of your door, with 
nothing to do unless you find such odd jobs for them as holding 



458 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. vii. 

the heel of your boot while you pull it on, or brushing your 
clothes for the fourteenth time. 

The greater or less value of the smallest coin in common use 
in a country is a rough test of the wealth or poverty of its 
inhabitants, and by the application of it to India we find that 
country poor indeed. At Agra, I had gone to a money-changer 
in the bazaar, and asked him for change, in the cowrie-shells 
which do duty as money, for an anna, or i^d. piece. He gave 
me handful after handful, till I cried enough. Yet when in the 
afternoon of the same day I had a performance on my threshold 
of " Tasa-ba-tasa " — that singular tune which reigns from Java to 
the Bosphorus, with Sanscrit words in Persia, and Malay words 
in the Eastern islands — the three players seemed grateful for 
half-a-dozen of the cowries, for they treated m^e to a native 
version of " Vee vont gah ham tall mardid, vee vont gah ham 
tall mardid," by way of thanks. Many strange natural objects 
pass as uncoined money in the East : tusks in Africa, women in 
Arabia, human skulls in Borneo : the Red Indians of America, 
indeed, sell their neighbours' scalps for money, but have not yet 
reached the height of civilization which would be denoted by 
their keeping them to use as such ; cowrie-shells, however, pass 
as money in almost every ancient trading country of the world. 

The historical cheapness of labour in India has led to such 
an obstinate aversion to all labour-saving expedients that such 
great works as the making of railway embankments and the 
boulevard construction at Delhi are conducted by the scraping 
together of earth with the hands, and the collected pile is slowly 
placed in tiny baskets, much like strawberry pottles, and borne 
away on women's heads to its new destination. Wheelbarrows, 
water-carts, picks, and shovels are in India all unknown. 

If, on my road from Kalka to Simla, I had an example of the 
cheapness of Indian labour, I also had one of its efficiency. 
The coolie who carried my baggage on his head trotted up the 
hills for twenty-one-hours, without halting for more than an hour 
or two, and this for two days' pay. 

During the first half-hour after leaving Kalka, the heat v/as as 
great as on the plains, but we had not gone many miles before 
we came out of the heat and dust into a new world, and an 
atmosphere every breath of which was ^life. I got out, and 



CHAP. VII.] . SIMLA. 459 

walked for miles ; and when we halted at a rest-house on the 
first plateau, I thoroughly enjoyed a cup of the mountain tea, 
and was still more pleased at the sight of the first red-coated 
English soldiers that I had seen since I left Niagara. The men 
were even attempting bowls and cricket, so cool were the 
evenings at this station. There is grim satire in the fact that the 
director-general of military gymnastics has his establishment at 
Simla, in the cold of the snowy range, and there invents running 
drills and such like summer diversions, to be executed by the 
unfortunates in the plains below. Bowls, which are an amuse- 
ment at Kussoolie, would in the hot weather be death at Kalka, 
only ten miles away ; but so short is the memory of climate that 
you are no more able to conceive the heat of the plains when 
in the hills than the cold of the hills when at Calcutta. 

There is no reason except a slight and temporary increase of 
cost to prevent the whole of the European troops in India being 
concentrated in a few cool and healthy stations. Provided that 
all the artillery be retained in ^the hands of the Europeans, 
almost the whole of the English forces might be kept in half-a- 
dozen hill stations, of which Darjeelingand Bangalore would be 
two, and some place near Bombay a third. It has been said 
that the men would be incapable, through want of acclimatisa- 
tion, of acting on the plains if retained in hill stations except 
when their services were needed ; but it is notoriously the fact 
that new comers from England — that is, men with health — do 
not suffer seriously from heat during the first six months which 
they pass upon the plains. 

Soon after dark, a terrific thunderstorm came on, the thunder 
rolling round the valleys and along the ridges, while the rain 
fell in short, sharp showers. My men put me down on the 
lee-side of a hut, and squatted for a long smoke. The custom 
common to all the Eastern races of sitting round a fire smoking 
all night long explains the number and the excellence of their 
tales and legends. In Europe we see the Swedish peasants 
sitting round their hearths chatting during the long winter 
evenings -: hence follow naturally the Thor legends : our sailors 
are with us the only men given to sitting in groups to talk : 
they are noted story-tellers. The word " yarn " exemplifies 
the whole philosophy of the matter. We meet, however, here 



460 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vii. 

the eternal difficulty of which is cause and which is effect. It 
is easy to say that the long nights of Norway, the confined 
space of the ship, making the fo'castle the sailor's only lounge, 
each in their way necessitate the story-telling ; not so in India, 
not so in Egypt, in Arabia, in Persia : there can here be no 
necessity for men sitting up all night to talk, short of pure love 
of talk for talking's sake. 

When the light came in the morning, we were ascending the 
same strangely-ribbed hills that we had been crossing by torch- 
light during the night, and were meeting flat-faced Thibetans, 
with hair done into many pig-tails, who were laboriously bring- 
ing over the mountain passes Chinese goods in tiny sheep-loads. 
For miles I journeyed on, up mountain sides and down into 
ravines, but never for a single moment upon a level, catching 
sight sometimes of portions of the Snowy Range itself, far 
distant, and half mingled with the clouds, till at last a huge 
mountain mass rising to the north and east blocked out all view 
save that behind me over the sea of hills that I had crossed, 
and the scene became monotonously hideous, with only that 
grandeur which hugeness carries with it — a view, in short, that 
would be fine at sunset, and at no other time. The weather, 
too, grew damp and cold — a cruel cold, with driving rain ; and 
the landscape was dreariness itself. 

Suddenly we crossed the ridge, and began to descend, when 
the sky cleared, and I found myself on the edge of the rhodo- 
dendron forest — tall trees with dark-green leaves and masses of 
crimson flowers ; ferns of a hundred different kinds marking 
the beds of the rivulets that coursed down through the woods, 
which were filled with troops of chattering monkeys. 

Rising again slightly, I began to pass the European bunga- 
lows, each in its thicket of deodar, and few with flat ground 
enough for more than half a rose-bed, or a quarter of 'a croquet- 
ground. On either side the ridge was a deep valley, with 
terraced rice-fields five thousand feet below, and, in the 
distance, on the one side the mist-covered plains lit by the 
single silvery ribbon of the distant Sutlej, on the other side the 
Snowy Range. 

The first Europeans whom I met in Simla were the Viceroy's 
children and their nurses, who formed with their escort a stately 



CEiAP. Til.] SIMLA. 46 r 

procession. First came a tall native in scarlet, then a jampan 
with a child, then one with a nurse and viceregal baby, and so 
on, the bearers wearing scarlet and grey. All the residents at 
Simla have different uniforms for their jampanees, some clothing 
their men in red and green, some in purple and yellow, some in 
black and white. Before reaching the centre of the town, I 
had met several Europeans riding, although the sun was still 
high and hot ; but before evening a hailstorm came across the 
range, and filled the woods with a chilling mist, and night found 
me toasting my feet at a blazing fire in an Alpine room of 
polished pine — a real room, with doors and casement j not a 
section of a street with a bed in it, as are the rooms in the 
Indian plains. Two blankets were a luxury in this " tropical 
climate of Simla," as one of our best-informed London news- 
papers once called it. The fact is that Simla, which stands at 
from seven to eight thousand feet above the sea, and in latitude 
31^, or 7° north of the boundary of the tropics, has a climate 
cold in everything except its sun, which is sometimes strong. 
The snow lies on the ground at intervals for five months of the 
year ; and during what is by courtesy styled " the hot weather," 
cold rains are of frequent occurrence. 

The climate of Simla is no mere matter of curiosity : it is a 
question of serious interest in connexion with the retention of 
our Indian empire. When the Government seeks refuge here 
from the Calcutta heat, the various departments are located in 
tiny cottages and bungalows up on the mountain and down in 
the valley, practically as far from each other as London from 
Brighton ; and, moreover, Simla itself is forty miles from Kalka 
by the shortest path, and sixty by the better bridle path. There 
is clearly much loss of time in sending despatches for half the 
year to and from a place like this, and there is no chance of 
the railway ever coming nearer to it than Kalka, even if it 
reaches that. On the other hand, the telegraph is replacing the 
railway day by day, and mountain heights are no bar to wires. 
This poor little, uneven hill village has been styled the " Indian 
Capua " and nicknamed the " Hill Versailles ;" but so far from 
enervating the ministers or enfeebling the administration, Simla 
gives vigour to the Government, and a hearty English tone to 
the State papers issued in the hot months. English ministers 



462 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vn. 

are not in London all the year long, and no men, ministers or 
not, could stand four years' continual brainwork in Calcutta. 
In 1866, the first year of the removal of the Government as a 
whole and publication of the Gazette at Simla during the sum- 
mer, all the arrears of work in all the offices were cleared off for 
the first time since the occupation by us of any part of India. 

Bengal, the North-West Provinces, and the Punjaub must 
soon be made into " governorships," instead of " lieutenant- 
governorships," so that the Viceroy may be relieved from 
tedious work, and time saved by the Northern Governors 
reporting straight home, as do the Governors of Madras and 
Bombay, unless a system be adopted under which all shall 
report to the Viceroy. At all events, the five divisions must be 
put upon the same footing one with another. This being 
granted, there is no conceivable reason for keeping the Viceroy 
at Calcutta — a city singularly hot, unhealthy, and out of the 
way. On our Council of India, sitting at the capital, we ought 
to have natives picked from all India for their honesty, ability, 
and discretion ; but so bad is the water at Calcutta, that the 
city is deadly to Avater-drinkers ; and although they value the 
distinction of a seat at the Council more than any other honour 
within their reach, many of the most distinguished natives in 
India have chosen to resign their places rather than pass a 
second season at Calcutta, 

It is not necessary that we should argue about Calcutta's 
disadvantages. It is enough to say that, of all Indian cities, 
we have selected for our capital the most distant and the most 
unhealthy. The great question is. Shall we have one capital, 
or two ? Shall we keep the Viceroy all the year round in a 
central but hot position, such as Delhi, Agra, Allahabad, or 
Jubbelpore, or else at a less central but cooler station, such as 
Nassuck, Poonah, Bangalore, or Mussoorie ? or shall we keep 
him at a central place during the cool, and a hill place during 
the hot weather ? There can be but little doubt that Simla is a 
necessity at present, but with a fairly healthy city, such as Agra, 
for the head-quarters of the Government, and the railway open 
to within a few miles of Mussoorie, so that men could run to the 
hills in six or seven hours, and even spend a few days there in 
each summer month, an efficient government could be main- 



CHAP. VII.] SIMLA. 463 

tained in the plains. We must remember that Agra is now 
within twenty-three days of London ; and that, with the Persian 
Gulf route open, and a railway from Kurrachee (the natural 
port of England in India), leave for home would be a matter 
still more simple than it has become already. With some such 
central town as Poonah for the capital, the Bombay and Madras 
commander-in-chiefships could be abolished, with the result of 
saving a considerable expense, and greatly increasing the effi- 
ciency of the Indian army. It is probable that Simla will not 
continue to be the chosen station of the Government in the 
hills. The town is subject to the ravages of dysentery j the 
cost of draining it would be immense, and the water supply is 
very hmited : the bheesties have often to wait whole hours for 
their turn. 

Mussoorie has all the advantages and none of the drawbacks 
of Simla, and lies compactly in ground on which a small city 
could be built, whereas Simla straggles along a narrow mountain 
ridge, and up and down the steep sides of an Alpine peak. It 
is questionable, however, whether, if India is to be governed 
from at home, the seat of Government should not be at 
Poonah, within reach of London. The telegraph has already 
made viceroys of the ancient kind impossible. 

The sunrise view of the Snowy Range from my bungalow was 
one rather strange from the multitude of peaks in sight at once 
than either beautiful or grand. The desolate ranges of foot-hills 
destroy the beauty that the contrast of the deodars, the crimson 
rhododendrons, and the snow would otherwise produce, and 
the height at which you stand seems to dwarf the distant 
ranges ; but from one of the spots which I reached in a moun- 
tain march, the prospect was widely different. Here we saw at 
once the sources of the Jumna, the Sutlej, and the Ganges, the 
dazzling peaks of Gungootrie, of Jumnotrie, and of Kamet ; 
while behind us in the distant plains we could trace the Sutlej 
itself, silvered by the hazy rays of the half-risen sun. We had 
in sight not only the 26,000 feet of Kamet, but no less than 
twenty other peaks of over 20,000 feet, snow-clad to their very 
bases, while between us and the nearest outlying range were 
valleys from which the ear caught the humble murmur of fresh- 
risen streams. 



464 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, yiii 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Colonization. 

Connected with the question of the site of the future capital 
is that of the possibiHty of the colonization by Englishmen of 
portions of the peninsula of India. 

Hitherto the attempts at settlement which have been made 
have been mainly confined to six districts — Mysore, where 
there are only some dozen planters ; the Neilgherries proper, 
where coffee-planting is largely carried on ; Oude, where many 
Europeans have taken land as zemindars, and cultivate a por- 
tion of it, while they let out the remainder to natives on the 
Metayer plan j Bengal, where indigo-planting is gaining ground ; 
the Himalayan valleys, and Assam. Settlement in 'the hot 
plains is limited by the fact that English children cannot there 
be reared, so to the hill districts the discussion must be con- 
fined. 

One of the commonest of mistakes respecting India consists 
in the supposition that there is available land in large quantities 
on the slopes of the Himalayas. There are no Himalayan 
slopes ; the country is all straight up and down, and for English 
colonists there is no room — no ground that will grow anything 
but deodars, and those only moderately well. The hot sun 
dries the ground, and the violent rains follow, and cut it 
through and through with deep channels, in this way gradually 
making all the hills both steep and ribbed. Mysore is still a 
native State, but, in spite of this, European settlement is in- 
creasing year by year, and there, as in the Neilgherries proper, 
there is room for many coffee-planters, though fever is not 
unknown; but when India is carefully surveyed, the only 
district that appears to be thoroughly suited to English settle- 



CHAP. VIII.] COLONIZATION. 465 

ment, as contrasted with mere planting or landholding, is the 
valley of Cashmere, where the race would probably not suffer 
deterioration. With the exception of Cashmere, none of the 
deep mountain valleys are cool enough for permanent European 
settlement. Family life is impossible where there is no home ; 
you can have no English comfort, no English virtues, in a 
climate which forces your people to live out of doors, or else in 
rocking-chairs or hammocks. Nightwork and reading are all 
but impossible in a climate where multitudes of insects haunt 
the air. In the Himalayan valleys, the hot weather is terribly 
scorching, and it lasts for half the year, and on the hill-sides 
there is but little fertile soil. 

The civilians and rulers of India in general are extremely 
jealous of the " interlopers," as European settlers are termed ; 
and, although tea cultivation was at first encouraged by the 
Bengal Government, recent legislation, fair or unfair, has almost 
ruined the tea-planters of Assam. The native population of 
that district is averse to labour, and coolies from a distance 
have to be brought m ; but the Government of India, as the 
planters say, interferes with harsh and narrow regulations, and 
so enormously increases the cost of imported labour as to ruin 
the planters, who, even when they have got their labourers on 
the ground, cannot make them work, as there exist no means of 
compelling specific performance of a contract to work. The 
remedy known to the English law is an action for damages 
brought by the employer against the labourer, so with English 
obstinacy we declare that an action for damages shall be the 
remedy in Burmah or Assam. A provision for attachment of 
goods and imprisonment of person of labourers refusing to per- 
form their portion of a contract to work was inscribed in the 
draft of the proposed Indian " Code of Civil Procedure," but 
vetoed by the authorities at home. 

The Spanish Jesuits themselves were not more afraid of free 
white settlers than is our Bengal Government. An enterprising 
merchant of Calcutta lately obtained a grant of vast tracts of 
country in the Sunderbunds — the fever-haunted jungle near 
Calcutta — and had already completed his arrangements for 
importing Chinese labourers to cultivate his acquisitions, 
when the jealous civilians got wind of the affair, and forced 

2 H 



466 , COLONIZATION. [chap. viii. 

Government into a most undignified retreat from their agree- 
ment. 

The secret of this opposition to settlement by Europeans 
Hes partly in a horror of " low-caste Englishmen," and a 
fear that they will somewhat debase Europeans in native 
eyes, but far more in the wish of the old civilians to keep 
India to themselves as a sort of " happy hunting ground " — 
a wish which has prompted them to start the cry of " India 
for the Indians " — ^which of course means India for the Anglo- 
Indians. 

Somewhat apart from the question of European colonization, 
but closely related to it, is that of the holding by Europeans of 
landed estates in India. It will perhaps be conceded that the 
European should, on the one hand, be allowed to come into 
the market and purchase land, or rent it from the Government 
or from individuals, on the same conditions as those which 
would apply to natives, and, on the other hand, that special 
grants should not be made to Europeans as they were by us in 
Java in old times. In Eastern countries, however, government 
can hardly be wholly neutral, and, whatever the law, if European 
landholders be encouraged, they will come ; if discouraged, they 
will stay away. From India they stop away, while such as do 
reach Hindostan are known in official circles by the significant 
name of " interlopers." 

Under a healthy social system, which the presence of English 
planters throughout India, and the support which would thus 
be given to the unofficial press, would of itself do much to 
create, the owning of land by Europeans could produce nothing 
but good. The danger of the use of compulsion towards the 
natives would not exist, because in India — unlike what is the 
case in Dutch Java — the interest of the ruling classes would be 
the other way. If it be answered that, once in possession of 
the land, the Europeans would get the government into their own 
hands, we must reply that they could never be sufficiently 
numerous to have the slightest chance of doing anything of the 
kind. As we have seen in Ceylon, the attempt on the part of 
the planters to usurp the government is sternly repressed by 
the lEnglish people, the moment that its true bearing is under- 
stood, and yet in Ceylon the planters are far more numerous 



CHAP. VIII.] COLONIZATION. 467 

in proportion to the population than they can ever be in India, 
where the dimate of the plains is fatal to European children, 
and where there is comparatively little land upon the hills; 
while in Ceylon the coffee-tracts, which are mountainous and 
healthy, form a sensible proportion of the whole lands of the 
island. It is true that the press, when once completely in the 
planters' hands, may advocate their interests at the expense of 
those of the natives, but in the case of Queensland we have 
seen that this is no protection to the planters against the inqui- 
sitive home eye, which would be drawn to India as it has been 
to Queensland by the reports of independent travellers, and of 
interested but honest missionaries. 

The infamies of the foundation of the indigo-plantations in 
Bengal, and of many of the tea-plantations in Assam, in which 
violence was freely used to make the natives grow the selected 
crop, and in some cases the land actually stolen from its owners, 
have gone far to make European settlement in India a by-word 
among the friends of the Hindoo ; but it is clear that an efficient 
police would suffice to restrain these illegalities and hideous 
wrongs. It might become advisable in the interest of the 
natives to provide that not only the officers, but also the sub- 
officers and some constables of the police, should be Europeans 
in districts where the plantations lay, great care being taken to 
select honest and fearless men, and to keep a strict watch on 
their conduct. 

The two great securities against that further degradation of 
the natives which has been foretold as a result of the expected 
influx of Europeans are the general teaching of the English lan- 
guage, and the grant of perfect freedom of action (the Govern- 
ment standing aloof) to missionaries of every creed under 
heaven. The bestowal of the English tongue upon the natives 
will give the local newspapers a larger circulation among them 
than among the planter classes, and so, by the powerful motive 
of self-interest, force them to the side of liberty; while the 
honesty of some of the missionaries and the interest of others 
will certainly place the majority of the religious bodies on the 
side of freedom. It is needless to say that the success of a 
policy which would be opposed by the local press and at the 
same time by the chief English Churches is not an eventuality 

2 H 2 



468 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. viii. 

about which we need give ourselves concern, and it is therefore 
probable that on the whole the encouragement of European 
settlement upon the plains would be conducive to the welfare 
of the native race. 

That settlement or colonization would make our tenure of 
India more secure is very doubtful, and, if certain, would be a 
point of little moment. If, when India has passed through the 
present transition stage from a country of many peoples to a 
country of only one, we cannot continue to rule her by the con- 
sent of the majority of her inhabitants, our occupation of the 
country must come to an end, whether we will or no. At the 
same time, the union of interests and community of ideas which 
would rise out of well-ordered settlement would do much to 
endear our Government to the great body of the natives. As 
a warning against European settlement as it is, every English- 
man should read the drama "Nil Darpan." 

During my stay at Simla, I visited a pretty fair in one of the 
neighbouring valleys. There was much buffoonery and dancing 
— among other things, a sort of jig by a fakeer, who danced him- 
self into a fit, real or pretended ; but the charm of this, as of ail 
Hindoo gatherings, lay in the colour. The women of the Pun- 
jaub dress very gaily for their fetes, wearing tight-fitting trousers 
of crimson, blue, or yellow, and a long thin robe of white, or 
crimson-grounded Cashmere shawl. Bracelets and anklets of 
silver, and a nose-ring, either huge and thin, or small and nearly 
solid, complete the dress. 

At the fair were many of the Goorkhas (of whom there is a 
regiment at Simla), who danced, and seemingly enjoyed them- 
selves immensely ; indeed, the natives of all parts of India, 
from Nepaul to the Deccan, possess a most enviable faculty of 
amusement, and they say that there is a professional bufibon 
attached to every Goorkha regiment. Their full-dress is like 
that of the French chasseurs a pied, but in their undress uniform 
of white, the trousers worn so tight as to wrinkle from stretch- 
ing — these dashing little fellows, with their thin legs, broad 
shoulders, bullet heads, and flat faces, look extremely like a 
corps of jockeys. A general inspecting one of these regiments 
once said to the colonel: "Your men are small, sir." "Their 
pay is small, sir !" growled the colonel, in a towering passion. 



CHAP. VIII.] COLONIZATION. 469 

There were unmistakeable traces of Buddhist architecture in 
the httle Hindoo shrine. Of the Chinese pilgrimages to India 
in the Buddhist period there are many records yet extant, and 
one of these, we are told, relates how, as late as the four- 
teenth century, the Emperor of China asked leave of the Delhi 
ruler to rebuild a temple at the southern base of the Himalayas, 
inasmuch as it was visited by his Tartar people. 



470 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ix. 



CHAPTER IX. 

The Gazette. 

Of all printed information upon India, there is none which, 
either for value or interest, can be ranked with that contained 
in the Government Gazette, which during my stay at Simla was 
published at that town, the Viceroy's Council having moved 
there for the hot weather. Not only are the records of the 
mere routine business interesting from their variety, but almost 
every week there is printed along with the Gazette a supplement, 
which contains memoranda from leading natives or from the 
representatives of the local governments upon the operations of 
certain customs, or on the probable effects of a proposed law, 
or similar communications. Sometimes the circulars issued by 
the Government are alone reprinted, " with a view to elicit 
opinions," but more generally the whole of the replies are given. 
It is difficult for English readers to conceive the number and 
variety of subjects upon which a single number of the Gazette 
will give information of some kind. The paragraphs are strung 
together in the order in which they are received, without arrange- 
ment or connexion. "A copy of a treaty with his Highness 
the Maharajah of Cashmere" stands side by side with a grant 
of three months' leave to a lieutenant of Bombay Native Foot; 
while above is an account of the suppression of the late mur- 
derous outrages in the Punjaub, and below a narrative of the 
upsetting of the Calcutta mails into a river near Jubbelpore. 
" A khureta from the Viceroy to his Highness the Rao Oomaid 
Singh Bahadoor" orders him to put down crime in his dominions, 
and the humble answer of the Rao is printed, in which he 
promises to do his best. Paragraphs are given to "the float- 
ing dock at Rangoon j" '- the disease among mail horses j" 



CFiAP. IX.] T^^ GAZETTE. 471 

"the Suez canal;" "the forests of Oude ;" and "polygamy 
among the Hindoos." The Viceroy contributes a " note on 
the administration of the Khetree chieftainship ;" the Bengal 
Government sends a memorandum on " bribery of telegraph 
clerks ;" and the Resident of Kotah an official report of the 
ceremonies attending the reception of a viceregal khureta 
restoring the honours of a salute to the Maha Rao of Kotah. 
The khureta was received in state, the letter being mounted 
alone upon an elephant magnificently caparisoned, and saluted 
from the palace with 10 1 guns. There is no honour that we 
can pay to a native prince so great as that of increasmg his 
salute ; and, on the other hand, when the Guicowar of Baroda 
allows a suttee, or when Jung Bahadoor of Nepaul expresses 
his intention of visiting Paris, we punish them by docking them 
of two guns, or abolishing their salute, according to the magni- 
tude of the offence. 

An Order in Council confers upon the High Priest of the 
Parsees in the Deccan, " in consideration of his services during 
the mutiny of 1857," the honorary title of "Khan Bahadoor." 
A paragraph announces that an official investigation has been 
made into the supposed desecration by Scindia and the Viceroy 
of a mosque at Agra, and that it has been found that the place 
in question was not a mosque at all. Scindia had given an en- 
tertainment to the Viceroy at the Taj Mahal, and supper had 
been laid out at a building in the grounds. The native papers 
said the building was a mosque, but the Agra officials triumph- 
antly demonstrated that it had been used for a supper to Lord 
Ellenborough after the capture of Cabool, and that its name 
meant " Feast-place." " Report on the lighthouses of the 
Abyssinian coast ; " " Agreement with the Governor of Leh,'' 
Thibet, in reference to the trans-Himalayan caravans ; the pro- 
motion of one gentleman to be "Commissioner of Coorg," and 
of another to be "Superintendent of the teak forests of Lower 
Bumiah;" "Evidence on the proposed measures to suppress 
the abuses of polyandry in Travancore and Cochin (by arrange- 
ment with the Rajah of Travancore);" " Dismissal of Policeman 
Juggernauth Ramkam — Oude division. No. 11 company — for 
gross misconduct ;" " Report on the Orissa famine ;" " Plague 
in Turkey ; " " Borer insects in coffee plantations ; " " Presents 



472 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ix. 

to gentlemen at Fontainebleau for teaching forestry to Indian 
officers;" "Report on the Cotton States of America," for the 
information of native planters; "Division of Calcutta into 
postal districts " (in Bengalee as well as English) ; " Late en- 
gagement between the Punjaub cavalry and the Afghan tribes;" 
" Pension of 3rs. per mensem to the widow (aged 12) of Jamram 
Chesa, Sepoy, 27th Bengal N. I." are other headings. The 
relative space given to matters of importance and to those of 
little moment is altogether in favour of the latter. The govern- 
ment of two millions of people is transferred in three lines, but 
a page is taken up with a list of the caste-marks and nose-bor- 
ings of native women applying for pensions as soldiers' widows, 
and two pages are full of advertisements of lost currency notes. 

The columns of the Gazette, or at all events its supplements, 
offer to Government officials whose opinion has been asked 
upon questions on which they possess valuable knowledge, or 
in which the people of their district are concerned, an oppor- 
tunity of attacking the acts or laws of the Government itself — 
a chance of which they are not slow to take advantage. One 
covertly attacks the licence-tax; a second, under pretence -of 
giving his opinion on some proposed change in the contract 
law, backs the demands of the indigo-planters for a law that 
shall compel specific performance of labour-contracts on the 
part of the workman, and under penalty of imprisonment ; 
another lays all the ills under which India can be shown to 
suffer at the door of the Home Government, and points out the 
ruinous effects of continual changes of Indian Secretaries in 
London. 

It would be impossible to overrate the importance of the 
supplements to the Gazette, viewed either as a substitute for a 
system of communicated articles to the native papers, or as ma- 
terial for English statesmen, whether in India or at home, or as 
a great experiment in the direction of letting the people of 
India legislate for themselves. The results of no less than three 
Government inquiries were printed in the supplement during 
my stay in India, the first being in the shape of a circular to 
the various local governments requesting their opinion on the 
proposed extension to natives of the testamentary succession 
laws contained in the Indian Civil Code; while the second 



CHAP. IX.] THE GAZETTE. . 473 

related to the " ghaut murders," and the third to the abuses of 
polygamy among the Hindoos. The second and third inquiries 
were conducted by means of circulars addressed by Govern- 
ment to those most interested, whether native or European. 

The evidence in reply to the '^ ghaut murder " circular was 
commenced by a letter from the Secretary to the Government 
of Bengal to the Secretary to the Government of India, calling 
the attention of the Viceroy in Council to an article written in 
Bengalee by a Hindoo in the Dacca Frokash on the practice of 
taking sick Hindoos to the river-side to die. It appears from 
this letter that the local governments pay careful attention to the 
opinions of the native papers — unless, indeed, we are to accept 
the view that " the Hindoo " was a Government clerk, and the 
article written to order — a supposition favoured by its radical 
and destructive tone. The Viceroy answered that the local 
officers and native gentlemen of all shades of religious opinion 
were to be privately consulted. A confidential communication 
was then addressed to eleven English and four Hindoo gentle- 
men, and the opinions of the English and native newspapers 
were unofficially invited. The Europeans were chiefly for the 
suppression of the practice ; the natives — with the exception 
of one, who made a guarded reply — stated that the abuses of 
the custom had been exaggerated, and that they could not re- 
commend its suppression. The Government agreed with the 
natives, and decided that nothing should be done — an opinion 
in which the Secretary of State concurred. 

In his reply to the " ghaut murder " circular, the representa- 
tive of the orthodox Hindoos, after pointing out that the Dacca 
Frokash is the Dacca organ of the Brahmos, or Bengal Deists, 
and not of the true Hindoos, went on to quote at length from 
the Hindoo scriptures, passages which show that to die in the 
Ganges water is the most blessed of all deaths. The quotations 
were printed in native character as well as in English in the 
Gazette. One of the officials in his reply pointed out that the 
discouragement of a custom was often as effective as its pro- 
hibition, and instanced the cessation of the practice of "hook- 
swinging" and "self-mutilation." 

Valuable as is the correspondence as a sample of the method 
pursued in such inquiries, the question under discussion has not 



474 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ix. 

the importance that attaches to the examination into the abuses 
of the practice of polygamy. 

To prevent an outcry that the customs of the Hindoo people 
were being attacked, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal stated 
in his letters to the Government of India, that it was his wish 
that the inquiry should be strictly confined to the abuses of 
Koolin polygamy, and that there should be no general examina- 
tion into ordinary polygamy, which was not opposed even by 
enlightened Hindoos. The polygamy of the Koolin Brahmins 
is a system of taking a plurality of wives as a means of sub- 
sistence : the Koolins were originally Brahmins of peculiar 
merit, and such was their sanctity that there grew up a custom 
of payments being made to them by the fathers of the forty or 
fifty women whom they honoured by marriage. So greatly has 
the custom grown that Koolins have sometimes as many as 
eighty wives, and the husband's sole means of subsistence 
consists in payments from the fathers of his wives, each of 
whom he visits, however, only once in three or four years. 
The Koolin Brahmins live in luxury and indolence, their wives 
exist in misery, and the whole custom is plainly repugnant to 
the teachings of the Hindoo scriptures, and is productive of 
vice and crime. The committee, appointed for the consideration 
of the subject by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal — which 
consisted of two English civilians and five natives — reported 
that the suggested systems of registration of marriages, or of 
fines increasing in amount for every marriage after the first, 
would limit the general liberty of the Hindoos to take many 
wives, which they were forbidden to touch. On the other hand, 
to recommend a declaratory law on plural marriages would be 
to break their instructions, Avhich ordered them to refrain from 
giving the sanction of English law to Hindoo polygamy. One 
native dissented from the report, and favoured a declaratory law. 
The English idea of "not recognising" customs or religions 
which exist among a large number of the inhabitants of English 
countries is a strange one, and productive of much harm. It is 
not necessary, indeed, that we should countenance the worship 
of Juggernauth by ordering our officials to present offerings at 
his shrine, but it is at least necessary that we should recognise 
native customs by legislating to restrain them within due limits. 



CHAP. IX.] TEE GAZETTE. 475 

To refuse to " recognise" polygamy, which is the social state of 
the vast majority of the citizens of the British empire, is not 
less ridiculous than to refuse to recognise that Hindoos are 
black. 

Recognition is one thing, interference another. How far we 
should interfere with native customs is a question upon which 
no general rule can be given, unless it be that we should in all 
cases of proposed interference with social usages or religious 
ceremonies consult intelligent but orthodox natives, and act up 
to their advice. In Ceylon, we have prohibited polygamy and 
polyandry, although the law is not enforced ; in India, we " un- 
officially recognise " the custom ; in Singapore, we have dis- 
tinctly recognised it by an amendment to the Indian Succession 
Law, which there applies to nutrves as well as Europeans. In 
India, we put down suttee^ while, in Australia, we tolerate cus- 
toms at least as barbarous. 

One of the social systems which we recognise in India is far 
more revolting to our English feelings than is that of polygyny 
— namely, the custom of polyandry, under which each woman 
has many husbands at a time. This custom we unofficially 
recognise as completely as we do polygyny, although it prevails 
only on the Malabar coast, and among the hill-tribes of the 
Himalaya, and not among the strict Hindoos. The Thibetan 
frontier tribes have a singular form of the institution, for with 
them the woman is the wife of all the brothers of a family, the 
eldest brother choosing her, and the eldest son succeeding to 
the property of his mother and all her husbands. In Southern 
India, the polyandry of the present day differs little from that 
which in the middle of the fifteenth century Nicolo de Conti 
found flourishing in Calicut. Each woman has several husbands, 
some as many as ten, who all contribute to her maintenance, 
she living apart from all of them ; and the children are allotted 
to the husbands at the will of the wife. 

The toleration of polygyny, or common polygamy, is a vexed 
question everywhere. In India, all authorities are in favour of 
respecting it ; in Natal, opinion is the other way. While we 
suppress it in Ceylon, even among black races conquered by us 
with little pretext only fifty years ago, we are doubtful as to the 
propriety of its suppression by the United States among white 



476 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. ix. 

people, who, whatever was the case with the original leaders, 
have for the most part settled down in Utah since it has been 
the territory of a nation whose imperial laws prohibit polygamy 
in plain terms. 

The inquiries into the abuses of polygamy which have lately 
been conducted in Bengal and in Natal have revealed singular 
differences between the polygamy of the Hindoos and of the 
hill-tribes, between Indian and Mormon polygamy, and between 
both and the Mohamedan law. The Hindoo laws, while they 
limit the number of legal wives, allow of concubines, and, in 
the Maharajah case. Sir Joseph Arnould went so far as to say 
that polygamy and courtezanship are always found to flourish 
side by side, although the reverse is notoriously the case at Salt 
Lake City, where concubinage is punishable, in name at least, 
by death. Again, polygamy is somewhat discouraged by Moha- 
medan and Hindoo laws, and the latter even lay down the sum 
which in many cases is to be paid to the first wife as compensa- 
tion for the wrong done her by the taking of other wives. 
Among the Mormons, on the other hand, polygamy is enjoined 
upon the faithful, and, so far from feeling herself aggrieved, the 
first wife herself selects the others, or is at the least consulted. 
Among some of the hill-tribes of India, such as the Paharis of 
Bhaugulpoor, polygamy is encouraged, but with a limitation 
to four wives. 

Among the Mohamedans, the number of marriages is re- 
stricted, and divorce is common ; among the Mormons there is 
no limit — indeed, the more wives the greater a man's glory — 
and divorce is all but unknown. The greatest, however, of ail 
the many differences between Eastern and Mormon polygamy 
lies in the fact that, of the Eastern wives, one is the chief, while 
Mormon wives are absolutely equal in legitimacy and rank. 

Not only is equality the law, but the first wife has no recog- 
nised superiority of position over the others in the Mormon 
family. By custom she is always consulted by her husband in 
reference to the choice of a new wife, while the other wives are 
not always asked for their opinion ; but this is a matter of habit, 
and the husband is in no way bound by her decision. Again, 
the first wife — if she is a consenting party — often gives away 
the fresh wives at the altar ; but this, too, is a mere custom. 



CHAP. IX.] THE GAZETTE. 477 

The fact that in India one of the wives generally occupies a 
position of far higher dignity than that held by the others will 
make Indian polygamy easy to destroy by the lapse of time and 
operation of social and moral causes. As the city-dwelling 
natives come to mix more with the Europeans, they will find that 
only one of their wives will be generally recognised. This will 
tend of itself to repress polygamy among the wealthy native 
merchants and among the rajahs who are members of our 
various councils, and their example will gradually react upon 
the body of the natives. Already a majority of the married 
people of India are monogamists by practice, although poly- 
gamists in theory; their marriages being limited by poverty, 
although not by law. The classes which have to be reached 
are the noble families, the merchants, and the priests ; and over 
the two former European influence is considerable, while the 
inquiry into Koolinism has proved that the leading natives will 
aid us in repressing the abuses of polygamy among the priests. 



478 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. x. 



CHAPTER X. 

Umritsur. 

At Umbala, I heard that the Sikh pilgrims returning from the 
sacred fair, or great Hindoo camp-meeting, at Hurdwar, had 
been attacked by cholera, and excluded from the town ; and as 
I quitted Umbala in the evening, I came upon the cholera- 
stricken train of pilgrims escaping by forced marches towards 
their homes — in many cases a thousand miles away. Tall, lithe, 
long-bearded men with large hooked noses, high foreheads, and 
thin lips, stalked along, leading by one hand their veiled women, 
who ran behind, their crimson and orange trousers stained with 
the dust of travel, while bullock-carts decked out with jingling 
bells bore the tired and the sick. Many children of all ages 
were in the throng. For mile after mile I drove through their 
ranks, as they marched with a strange kind of weary haste, with 
few halts, with little rest, if any. One great camp we left behind 
us, but only one ; and all night long we were still passing ranks 
of marching men and women. The march was silent ; there 
was none of the usual chatter of an Indian crowd ; gloom was 
in every face, and the people strode along like a beaten army 
flying from a destroying foe. 

The disease, indeed, was pressing on their heels. Two hun- 
dred men and women, as I was told at the Umbala lines, had 
died among them in the single day. Many had dropped from 
fright alone, but the pestilence was in the horde, and its seeds 
were carried into whatever villages the pilgrims reached. 

The gathering at Hurdwar had been attended by a million 
people drawn from every part of the Punjaub and North-West ;* 

* Government returns have since shown that no less than 2,885,000 
people were present at the fair. 



CHAP. X.] UMEITSUR. . 479 

not only Hindoos and Sikhs, but Scindhees, Beloochees, 
Pathans, and Afghans had their representatives in this great 
throng. As we neared the bridge of boats across the Sutlej, I 
found that a hurried quarantine had been set up on the spot. 
Only the sick or dying and bearers of corpses were detained, 
however ; a few questions were asked of the remainder, and 
ultimately they were allowed to cross : but driving on at speed, 
I reached Jullundur in the morning, only to find that the pil- 
grims had been denied admittance to the town. A camp had 
been formed without the city, to which the pilgrims had to go, 
unless they preferred to straggle on along the roads, dropping 
and dying by the way ; and the villagers throughout the country 
had risen on the wretched people, to prevent them returning to 
their homes. 

It is not strange that the Government of India should lately 
have turned its attention to the regulation or suppression of 
these fairs, for the city-dwelling people of North India will not 
continue long to tolerate enormous gatherings at the com- 
mencement of the hot weather, by which the lives of thousands 
must ultimately be lost. At Hurdwar, at Juggernauth, and at 
many other holy spots, hundreds of thousands — millions, not 
infrequently — are collected yearly from all parts of India. 
Great princes come down travelling slowly from their capitals 
with trains of troops and followers so long that they often take 
a day or more to pass a given spot. The Maharajah of Cash- 
mere's camp between Kalka and Umbala occupied when I saw 
it more space than that of Aldershot. Camels, women, suttlers 
without count, follow in the train, so that a body of five thousand 
men is multiplied until it occupies the space and requires the 
equipments of a vast army. A huge multitude of cultivators, 
of princes, of fakeers, and of roisterers met for the excitement 
and the pleasures of the camp, is gathered about the holy spot. 
There is religion, and there is trade ; indeed, the religious pil- 
grims are for the most part shrewd traders, bent on making a 
good profit from their visit to the fair. 

The gathering at Hurdwar in 1867 had been more than 
usually well attended and successful, when suddenly a rumour 
of cholera was heard ; the police procured the break-up of the 
camp, and Government thought fit to prohibit the visit to Simla 



48o ' GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. x. 

of the Maharajah of Cashmere. The pilgrims had hardly left 
the camp upon their journey home when cholera broke out, 
and by the time I passed them hundreds were already dead, 
and a panic had spread through India. The cholera soon 
followed the rumour, and reached even to the healthiest hill- 
towns, and 6000 deaths occurred in the city of Srinuggur, after 
the Maharajah's return with his infected escort from Hurdwar. 
A Government which has checked infanticide and suppressed 
suttee could not fail to succeed, if it interfered, in causing these 
fairs to be held in the cold weather. 

At Jullundur, I encountered a terrible dust-storm. It came 
from the south and west, and, to judge from its fierceness, must 
have been driven before the wind from the great sandy desert 
of Northern Scinde. The sun was rising for a sultry day, when 
from the south there came a blast which in a minute covered 
the sky with a leaden cloud, while from the horizon there 
advanced, more slowly, a lurid mass of reddish-brown. It soon 
reached the city, and then, from the wall where I sought shelter, 
nothing could be seen but driving sand of ochre colour, nothing 
heard but the shrieking of the wind. The gale ceased as sud- 
denly as it began, but left a day which, delightful to travellers 
upon the Indian plains, would elsewhere have been called by 
many a hard namie — a day of lowering sky and dropping rain, 
with chilhng cold — in short, a day that felt and looked like an 
English thaw, though the thermometer must have stood at 75°. 
Another legacy from the storm was a view of the Himalayas 
such as is seldom given to the dwellers on the plains. Looking 
at the clouds upon the northern horizon, I suddenly caught 
sight of the Snowy Range hanging, as it seemed, above them, 
half-way up the skies. Seen with a foreground of dawk jungle 
in bright bloom, the picture was beautiful, but the view too 
distant to be grand, except through the ideas of immensity 
called up by the loftiness of the peaks. While crossing the Beeas 
(the ancient Hyphasis, and eastern boundary of the Persian 
empire in the days of Darius), as I had crossed the Sutlej, by 
a bridge of boats, I noticed that the railway viaduct, which was 
being built for the future Umritsur and Delhi line, stood some 
way from the deep water of the river ; indeed, stood chiefly 
upon dry land. The rivers change their course so often that 



CHAP. X.] UMRITSUR. 481 

the Beeas and Sutlej bridges will each have to be made a mile 
long. There has lately been given us in the Punjaub a singular 
instance of the blind confidence in which Government orders 
are carried out by the subordinates. The order was that the 
iron columns on which the Beeas bridge was to rest should 
each be forty-five feet long. In placing them, in some cases 
the bottom of the forty-five feet was in the shifting sand — in 
others, it was thirty feet below the surface of the solid rock : 
but a boring which was needless in the one case and worse 
than useless in the other has been persevered in to the end, the 
story nms, because it was the " hook'm." The Indian rivers 
are the great bars to road and railway making ; indeed, except 
on the Grand Trunk road, it may be said that the rivers of 
India are still unbridged. On the chief mail-roads stone cause- 
ways are built across the river-beds, but the streams are all but 
impassable during the rains. Even on the road from Kalka to 
Umbala, however, there is one river-bed without a causeway, 
across which the dawk-gharree is dragged by bullocks, who 
struggle slowly through the sand ; and, in crossing it, I saw a 
steam-engine lying half-buried in the drift. 

In India, we have been sadly neglectful of the roads. The 
Grand Trunk road and the few great railroads are the only 
means of communication in the country. Even between the 
terminus of the Bengal lines at Jubbelpore and of the Bombay 
railroad at Nagpore there was at the time of my visit no 
metalled road, although the distance was but 200 miles, and 
the mails already passed that way. Half a day at least was 
lost upon all the Calcutta letters, and Calcutta passengers for 
Bombay or England were put to an additional expense of some 
;,f 30 and a loss of a week or ten days in time from the absence 
of 200 miles of road. Until we have good cross-roads in India, 
and metalled roads into the interior from every railway station, 
we shall never succeed in increasing the trade of India, nor in 
civilizing its inhabitants. The Grand Trunk road is, however, 
the best in the world, and is formed of soft white nodules, found 
in beds through North India, which when pounded and mixed 
with water is known as "kunkur," and makes a road hard, 
smooth, clean, and lasting, not unhke that which asphalt gives. 

At Umritsur, I first found myself in the true East — the East 

2 I 



482 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. x. 

of myrtles, roses, and veiled figures with flashing eyes — the 
East of the "Arabian Nights" and " Lalla Rookh." The city 
itself is Persian, rather than Indian, in its character, and is 
overgrown with date-palms, pomegranates, and the roses from 
which the precious attar is distilled. Umritsur has the making 
of the attar for the world, and it is made from a rose which 
blossoms only once a year. Ten tons of petals of the ordinary 
country rose {rosa centifolid) are used annually in attar-making 
at Umritsur, and are worth from ;£"2o to ;^3o a ton in the raw 
state. The petals are placed in the retort with a small quantity 
of water, and heat is applied until the water is distilled through 
a hollow bamboo into a second vessel, which contains sandal- 
wood oil. A small quantity of pure attar passes with the water 
into the receiver. The contents of the receiver are then poured 
out, and allowed to stand till the attar rises to the surface, in 
small globules, and is skimmed off. The pure attar sells for its 
weight in silver. 

Umritsur is famous for another kind of merchandise more 
precious even than the attar. It is the seat of the Cashmere 
shawl trade, and three great French firms have their houses in 
the town, where, through the help of friends, shawls may be 
obtained at singularly low prices ; but travellers in far-off 
regions are often in the financial position of the Texan hunter 
who was offered a million of acres for a pair of boots — they 
" have not got the boots." 

It is only shawls of the second class that can be bought 
cheap at Umritsur ; those of the finest quality vary in price 
from ;£'4o to ^250, ^£"30 being the cost of the material. The 
shawl manufacture of the Punjaub is not confined to Umritsur ; 
there are 900 shawl-making shops in Loodiana, I was told 
while there. There are more than sixty permanent dies in use 
at the Umritsur shawl-shops \ cochineal, indigo, logwood, and 
saffron are the commonest and best. The shawls are made of 
the down which underlies the hair of the " shawl-goat " of the 
higher levels. The yak, the camel, and the dog of the Hima- 
layas, all possess this down as well as their hair or wool ; it 
serves them as a protection against the winter cold. Chogas — 
long cloaks used as dressing-gowns by Europeans — are also 
made in Umritsur, from the soft wool of the Bokhara camel, 



CHAP. X.] UMRITSUB. 483 

for Umritsur is now the head-quarters of the Central Asian 
trade with Hindostan. 

• The bazaar is the gayest and most busthng in India — the 
goods of all India and Central Asia are there. Dacca muslin- 
known as "woven air" — lies side by side with thick chogas of 
kinkob and embroidered Cashmere, Indian towels of coarse 
huckaback half cover Chinese watered silks, and the brilliant 
dyes of the brocades of Central India are relieved by the 
modest grays of the soh puttoo caps. The buyers are as motley 
as the goods — Rajpoots in turbans of deep blue, ornamented 
with gold thread, Cashmere valley herdsmen in strange caps, 
nautch girls from the first three bridges of Srinuggur, some of 
the so-called " hill fanatics," whose only religion is to levy con- 
tributions on the people of the plains, and Sikh troopers, home 
on leave, stalking through the streets with a haughty swagger. 
Some of the Sikhs wear the pointed helmets of their ancestors, 
the ancient Sakae; but whether he be helmeted or not, the 
enormous white beard of the Sikh, the fierce curl of his 
moustache, the cock of the turban, and the amplitude of his 
sash, all suggest the fighting man. The strange closeness of 
the likeness of the Hungarians to the Sikhs would lead one to 
think that the races are identical. Not only are they alike in 
build and warlike habits, but they brush their beards in the 
same fashion, and these little customs endure longer than 
manners — longer, often, than religion itself One of the crowd 
was a ruddy-faced, red-bearded, Judas-haired fellow, that looked 
every inch a Fenian, and might have stepped here from the 
Kilkenny wilds ; but many of the Sikhs had aquiline noses and 
fine features, so completely Jewish of the best and oldest type, 
that I was- reminded of Sir William Jones's fanciful derivation 
of the Afghan races from the lost Ten Tribes of Israel. It 
may be doubted whether the Sikhs, Afghans, Persians, ancient 
Assyrians, Jews, ancient Scythians, and Mag}^ars were not all 
originally of one stock. 

In India, dress still serves the purpose of denoting rank. 
The peasant is clothed in cotton, the prince in cloth of gold; 
and even religion, caste, and occupation are distinguished by 
their several well-known and unchanging marks. Indeed, the 
fixity of fashion is as singular in Hindostan as its infinite 

212 



484 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. x. 

changeableness in New York or France. The patterns we see 
to-day in the Bombay bazaar are those which were popular in 
the days of Shah Jehan. This regulation of dress by custom is 
one of the many difficulties in the way of our English manu- 
facturers in their Indian ventures. There has been an attempt 
made lately to bring about the commercial annexation of India 
to England : Lancashire is to manufacture the longee, dhotee, 
and saree, we are told ; Nottingham or Paisley are to produce 
us shumlasj Dacca is to give way to Norwich, and Coventry to 
supersede Jeypoor. It is strange that men of Indian knowledge 
and experience should be found who fail to point out the 
absurdity of our entertaining hopes of any great trade in this 
direction. The Indian women of the humbler castes are the 
only customers we can hope to have in India ; the high-caste 
people wear only ornamented fabrics, in the making of which 
native manufacturers have advantages which place them out of 
the reach of European competition : cheap labour; workmen 
possessed of singular culture, and of a grace of expression 
which makes their commonest productions poems in silk and 
velvet ', perfect knowledge of their customers' wants and tastes; 
scrupulous regard to caste conservatism — all these are possessed 
by the Hindoo manufacturer, and absent in the case of the 
firms of Manchester and Rochdale. As a rule, all Indian dress 
is best made by hand ; only the coarsest and least ornamented 
fabrics can be largely manufactured at paying rates in England. 
As for the clothing of the poorer people, the men for the most 
part wear nothing, the women little, and that little washed 
often, and changed never. Even for the roughest goods we 
cannot hope to undersell the native manufacturers by much in 
the presidency towns. Up country, if we enter into the com- 
petition, it can scarcely fail to be a losing one. England is not 
more unlikely to be clothed from India, than India from Great 
Britain. If European machinery is needed, it will be erected 
in Yokohama, or in Bombay, not in the West Riding. 

It is hardly to be believed that Englishmen have for some 
years been attempting to induce the natives to adopt our flower 
patterns — peonies, butterflies, and all. Ornament in India is 
always subordinate to the purpose which the object has to serve. 
Eastern art begins where English ends. The principles which 



CHAP. X.] UMRITSUR. 485 

centuries of study have given us as the maxims upon which the 
grammar of ornament is based are those which are instinctive 
in every native workman. Every costume, every vase, every 
temple and bazaar in India, gives eye-witness that there is truth 
in the saw that the finest taste is consistent with the deepest 
slavery of body, with the utmost slavishness of mind. A 
Hindoo of the lowest caste will spurn the gift of a turban or a 
loin-cloth, the ornamentation of which consists not with his 
idea of symmetry and grace. Nothing could induce a Hindoo 
to clothe himself in such a gaudy masquerading dress as 
maddens a Maori with delight and his friends with jealousy 
and mortification. In art as in deportment, the Hindoo loves 
harmony and quiet ; and dress with the Oriental is an art : 
there is as much feeling — as deep poetry — in the curves of the 
Hindoo Saree as in the outlines of the Taj. 

Umritsur is the spiritual capital of the Sikhs, and the Durbar 
Temple in the centre of the town is the holiest of their shrines. 
It stands, with the sunbeams glancing from its gilded roof, in 
the middle of a very holy tank, filled with huge weird fish- 
monsters that look as though they fed on men, and glare at you 
through cruel eyes. The city itself has taken its name from the 
sacred pond : Umritsur means " The pool of immortality." 

Leaving your shoes outside the precincts of the tank, with 
the police guard that we have stationed there, you skirt one 
side of the water, and then leave the mosaic terrace for a still 
more gorgeous causeway, that, bordered on either side by rows 
of golden lamp-supporters, carries the path across towards the 
rich pavilion, the walls of which are as thickly spread with gems 
as are those of Akbar's palace. Here you are met by a bewil- 
dering din, for under the inner dome sit worshippers by the 
score, singing with vigour the grandest of barbaric airs to the 
accompaniment of lyre, harp, and tomtom, while in the centre, 
on a cushion, is a long-bearded grey old gooroo, or priest of the 
Sikh religion — a creed singularly pure, though little known. The 
effect of the scene is much enhanced by the beauty of the sur- 
rounding houses, whose oriel windows overhang the tank, that the 
Sikh princes may watch the evolutions of the lantern-bearing 
boats on nights when the temple is illuminated. When seen by 
moonlight, the tank is a very picture from the " Arabian Nights." 



486 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. x. 

This is a time of ferment in the Sikh reHgion. A carpenter 
named Ram Singh — a man with all that combination of shrewd- 
ness and imagination, of enthusiasm and worldliness, by which 
the world is governed — another Mohamed or Brigham Young, 
perhaps — has preached his way through the Punjaub, infusing 
his own energy into others, and has drawn away from the Sikh 
Church some hundred thousand followers — reformers — who call 
themselves the Kookas. These modern Anabaptists — for many 
are disposed to look upon Ram Singh as another John of Ley- 
den — bind themselves by some terrible and secret oath, and the 
Government fear that reformation of religion is to be accom- 
panied by reformation of the State of a kind not advantageous 
to the English power. When Ram Singh lately proclaimed his 
intention of visiting the Durbar Temple, the gooroos incited 
the Sikh fanatics to attack his men with clubs, and the military 
police were forced to interfere. There is now, however, a 
Kooka temple at Lahore. 

In spite of religious ferment, there is little in the bazaar or 
temples of Umritsur to remind one of the times — only some 
twenty years ago — when the Sikh army crossed the Sutlej, and 
its leaders threatened to sack Delhi and Calcutta, and drive the 
English out of India ; it is impossible, however, to believe that 
there is no undercurrent in existence. Eighteen years cannot 
have sufficed to extinguish the Sikh nationality, and the men 
who beat us at Chillianwallah are not yet dead, or even old. 
When the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh returned from England in 
1864 to bury his mother's body, the chiefs crowded round him 
as he entered Lahore, and besought him to resume his position 
at their head. His answer was a haughty " Jao !" (" Begone!") 
If the Sikhs are to rise once more, they will look elsewhere for 
their leader. 



4^7 



CHAPTER XI. 

Lahore. 

Crossing in a railway journey of an hour one of the most 
fertile districts of the Punjaub, I was struck with the resemblance 
of the country to South Australia : in each great sweeps of 
wheat-growing lands, with here and there an acacia or mimosa 
tree ; in each a climate hot, but dry, and not unhealthy — singu- 
larly hot here for a tract in the latitude of Vicksburg, near which 
the Mississippi is sometimes frozen. 

Through groves of a yellow-blossomed, sweet-scented, weep- 
ing acacia, much like laburnum, in which the fortified railway 
station seems out of place, I reached the tomb-surrounded 
garden that is called Lahore — a city of pomegranates, olean- 
ders, hollyhocks, and roses. The date-groves of Lahore are 
beautiful beyond description ; especially so the one that hides 
the Agra Bank. 

Lahore matches Umritsur in the purity of its Orientalism, 
Agra in the strength and grandeur of its walls : but it has no 
Tank Temple and no Taj ; the Great Mosque is commonplace, 
Runjeet Singh's tomb is tawdry, and the far-famed Shalimar 
Gardens inferior to those of Pin j ore. The strangest sight of 
Lahore is its new railway station — a fortress of red brick, one 
of many which are rising all over India. The fortification of 
the railway stations is decidedly the next best step to that of 
having no forts at all. 

The city of Lahore is surrounded by a suburb of great tombs, 
in which Europeans have in many cases taken up their residence 
by permission of the owner, the mausoleums being, from the 
thickness of their walls, as cool as cellars. Sometimes, how- 
ever, a fanatical relative of the man buried in the tomb will 



488 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. xi. 

warn the European tenant that he will die within a year — a 
prophecy which poison has once or twice brought to its fulfil- 
ment in the neighbourhood of Lahore and at Moultan. 

Strolling in the direction of the Cabool Gate, I came on the 
Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjaub, driving in an open carriage 
drawn by camels ; and passing out on to the plain, I met all 
the officers in garrison returning on Persian ponies from a 
game at the Afghan sport of "hockey upon horseback," while 
a little farther were some English ladies with hawks. Through- 
out the Northern Punjaub a certain settling down in comfort 
on the part of the English officials is to be remarked, and the 
adaptations of native habits to English uses, of which I had in 
one evening's walk the three examples which I have mentioned, 
is a sign of a tendency towards that making the best of things 
which in a newly-occupied country precedes the entrance upon 
a system of permanent abode. Lahore has been a British city 
for nineteen years, Bombay for two centuries and more; yet 
Lahore is far more English than Bombay. 

Although there are as yet no signs of English settlement in 
the Punjaub, still the official community in many a Punjaub 
station is fast becoming colonial in its type, and Indian tradi- 
tions are losing ground. English wives and sisters abound in 
Lahore, even the railway and canal officials having brought out 
their families ; and during the cool weather race meetings, drag 
hunts, cricket matches, and croquet parties follow one another 
from day to day, and Lahore boasts a volunteer corps. When 
the hot season comes on, those who can escape to the hills, and 
the wives and children of those who cannot go, run to Dalhousie 
as Londoners do to Eastbourne. 

The healthy English tone of the European communities of 
Umritsur and Lahore is reflected in the newspapers of the 
Punjaub, which are the best in India, although the blunders of 
the native printers render the " betting news " unintelligible, 
and the " cricket scores " obscure. The columns of the Lahore 
papers present as singular a mixture of incongruous articles as 
even the Government Gazette offers to its readers. An official 
notice that it will be impossible to allow more than 560 
elephants to take part in the next Lucknow procession follows 
a report of the " ice meeting " of the community of Lahore, to 



CHAP. XI.] . LAHORE. 489 

arrange about the next supply ; and side by side with this is 
an article on the Punjaub trade with Chinese Tartary, which 
recommends the Government of India to conquer Afghanistan, 
and to re-occupy the valley of Cashmere. A paragraph notices 
the presentation of a valuable gift by the Punjaub Government 
to a native gentleman, who has built a serai at his own cost ; 
another records a brush with the Wagheers. The only police 
case is the infliction on a sweeper of a fine of thirty rupees for 
letting his donkey run against a high-caste woman, whereby she 
was defiled; but a European magistrate reprimands a native 
pleader for appearing in court with his shoes on ; a notice from 
the Lieutenant-Governor gives a list of the holidays to be 
observed by the courts, in which the " Queen's Birthday " comes 
between " Bhudur Kalee " and " Dors data Gunjbuksh," while 
"Christmas" follows " Shubberat," and "Ash Wednesday" 
precedes " Holee." As one of the holidays lasts a fortnight, 
and many more than a week, the total number of dies no?i is 
considerable ; but a postscript decrees that additional local 
holidays shall be granted for fairs and festivals, and for the 
solar and lunar eclipse, which brings the no-court days up to 
sixty or seventy, besides those in the Long Vacation. The 
Hindoos are in the happy position of having also six new- 
year's days in every twelvemonth ; but the editor of one of the 
Lahore papers says that his Mohamedan compositors manifest 
a singular interest in Hindoo feasts, which shows a gratifying 
spread of toleration ! An article on the " Queen's English in 
Hindostan," in the Punjaub Times^ gives, as a specimen of the 
poetry of Young Bengal, a serenade in which "the skylark 
carols on the primrose bush." " Emerge my love," the poet 

cries : 

' ' The fragrant, dewy grove 
We'll wander through till gun-fire bids us part." 

But the final stanza is the best : 

"Then, Leila; come ! nor longer cogitate ; 
Thy egress let no scruples dire retard ; 
Contiguous to the portals of thy gate 
Suspensively I supplicate regard." 

The advertisements range from books on the languages of 



4 90 GEEATEE BEITAIN, [CHAr. xi. 

Dardistan to Government contracts for elephant fodder, or 
price-lists of English beer ; and an announcement of an Afghan 
history in the Urdu tongue is followed by a prospectus of 
Berkhampstead Grammar School. King Edward would rub his 
eyes were he to wake and find himself being advertised in 
Lahore. 

The Punjaub Europeans, with their English newspapers and 
English ways, are strange governors for an empire conquered 
from the bravest of all Eastern races little more than eighteen 
years ago. A Lahore civilian, taking up a town policeman's 
staff, said to me one day, "Who could have thought in 1850 
that in 1867 we should be ruling the Sikhs with this?" 



491 



CHAPTER XII. 

Our Indian Army. 

During my slay in Lahore, a force of Sikhs and Pathans was 
being raised for service at Hong Kong by an officer staying in 
the same hotel with myself, and a large number of men were 
being enlisted in the city by recruiting parties of the Bombay 
army. In all parts of India, we are now relying, so far as our 
native forces are concerned, upon the men who only a few 
years back were by much our most dangerous foes. 

Throughout the East, subjects concern themselves but little 
in the quarrels of their princes, and the Sikhs are no exception 
to the rule. They fought splendidly in the Persian ranks at 
Marathon ; under Shere Singh, they made their memorable 
stand at Chillianwallah ; but, under Nicholson, they beat the 
bravest of the Bengal sepoys before IDelhi. Whether they fight 
for us or against us is all one to them. They fight for those 
who pay them, and have no politics beyond their pockets. So 
far, they seem useful allies to us, who hold the purse of India. 
Unable to trust Hindoos with arms, we can at least rule them 
by the employment as soldiers of their fiercest enemies. 

When we come to look carefully at our system, its morality is 
hardly clear. iVs we administer the revenues of India, nominally 
at least, for the benefit of the Indians, it might be argued that 
we may fairly keep on foot such troops as are best fitted to 
secure her against attack ; but the argument breaks down when 
it is remembered that 70,000 British troops are maintained in 
India from the Indian revenues for that purpose, and that local 
order is secured by an ample force of military police. Even if 
the employment of Sikhs in times of emergency may be 
advisable, it cannot be denied that the day has gone by for 



492 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xii. 

peraianently overawing a people by means of standing armies 
composed of their hereditary foes. 

In discussing the question .of the Indian armies, we have 
carefully to distinguish between the theory and the practice. 
The Indian official theory says that not only is the native army 
a valuable auxiliary to the English army in India, but that its 
moral effect on the people is of great benefit to us, inasmuch 
as it raises their self-respect, and offers a career to men who 
would otherwise be formidable enemies. The practice pro- 
claims that the native troops are either dangerous or useless by 
arming them with weapons as antiquated as the bow and arrow, 
destroys the moral effect which might possibly be produced by 
a Hindoo force by filling the native ranks with Sikh and 
Goorkha aliens and heretics, and makes us enemies without 
number by denying to natives that promotion whicH the theory 
holds out to them. The existing system is officially defended 
by the most contradictory arguments, and on the most shifting 
of grounds. Those who ask why we should not trust the natives, 
at all events to the extent of allowing Bengal and Bombay men 
to serve, and to serve with arms that they can use, in bodies 
which profess to be the Bengal and Bombay armies, but which 
in fact are Sikh regiments which we are afraid to arm, are told 
that the native army has mutinied times without end, that it has 
never fought well except where, from the number of British 
present, it had no choice but to fight, and that it is dangerous 
and inefficient. Those who ask why this shadow of a native 
army should be retained are told that its records of distinguished 
service in old times are numerous and splendid. The huge 
British force maintained in India, and the still huger native 
army, are each of them made an excuse for the retention of 
the other at the existing standard. If you say that it is evident 
that 70,000 British troops cannot be needed in India, you are 
told that they are required to keep the 120,000 native troops 
in check. If you ask. Of what use, then, are the latter ? you 
hear that in the case of a serious imperial war the English 
troops would be withdrawn, and the defence of India confided 
to these very natives who in time of peace require to be thus 
severely held in check. Such shallow arguments would be 
instantly exposed were not English statesmen bribed by the 



CHAP. XII.] OUR INDIAN ARMY, ' 493 

knowledge that their acceptance as good logic allows us to 
maintain at India's cost 70,000 British soldiers, who in time of 
danger would be available for our defence at home. 

That the English force of 70,000 men maintained in India in 
time of peace can be needed there, in peace or war, is not to be 
supposed by those who remember that 10,000 men were all 
that were really needed to suppress the wide-spread mutiny 
of 1857, and that Russia — our only possible enemy from with- 
out — never succeeded during a two years' war in her own 
territory in placing a disposable army of 60,000 men in the 
Crimea. Another mutiny such as that of 1857 is, indeed, im- 
possible now that we retain both forts and artillery exclusively 
in British hands ; and Russia having to bring her supplies and 
men across almost boundless deserts, or through hostile 
Afghanistan, would be met at the Khyber by our whole Indian 
army, concentrated from the most distant stations at a few days' 
notice, fighting in a well-known and friendly country, and 
supplied from the plains of all India by the railroads. Our 
English troops in India are sufficiently numerous, were it 
necessary, to fight both the Russians and our native army ; but 
it is absurd that we should maintain in India, in a time of 
perfect peace, at a yearly cost to the people of that country of 
from fourteen to sixteen millions sterling, an army fit to cope 
with the most tremendous disasters that could overtake the 
country, and at the same time unspeakably ridiculous that we 
should in all our calculations be forced to set down the native 
army as a cause of weakness. The native rulers, moreover, 
whatever their unpopularity with their people, were always able 
to array powerful levies against enemies from without ; and if 
our government of India is not a miserable failure, our influence 
over the lower classes of the people ought, at the least, to be 
little inferior to that exercised by the Mogul emperors or the 
Maratta chiefs. 

As for local risings, concentration of our troops by means of 
the railroads that would be constructed in half-a-dozen years 
out of our military savings alone, and which American experience 
shows us cannot be eff"ectually destroyed, would be amply suf- 
ficient to deal with them were the force reduced to 30,000 men 
and a general rebellion of the people of India we have no reason 



494 GREATER BRITAIN, [ciiAP. xii. 

to expect, and no right to resist should it by any combination 
of circumstances be brought about. 

The taxation required to maintain the present Indian army 
presses severely upon what is in fact the poorest country in the 
world ; the yearly drain of many thousand men weighs heavily 
upon us ; and our system seems to proclaim to the world the 
humiliating fact, that under British government, and in times of 
peace, the most docile of all peoples need an army of 200^000 
men, in addition to the military police, to watch them, or keep 
them down. 

Whatever the decision come to with regard to the details of 
the changes to be made in the Indian army system, it is at least 
clear that it will.be expedient in us to reduce the English army 
in India if we intend it for India's defence, and our duty to 
abolish it if we intend it for our own. It is also evident that, 
after allowing for mere police duties — which should in all cases 
be performed by men equipped as, and called by the name of, 
police — the native army should, whatever its size, be rendered 
as effective as possible, by instruction in the use of the 'best 
weapons of the age. If local insurrections have unfortunately 
to be quelled, they must be quelled by English troops j and 
against European invaders, native troops, to be of the slightest 
service, must be armed as Europeans. As the possibility of 
European invasion is remote, it would probably be advisable 
that the native army should be gradually reduced until brought 
to the point of merely supplying the body-guards and cere- 
monial-troops; at all events, the practice of overawing Sikhs with 
Hindoos, and Hindoos with Sikhs, should be abandoned as 
inconsistent with the nature of our government in India, and 
with the first principles of freedom. 

There is, however, no reason why we should wholly deprive 
ourselves of the services of the Indian warrior tribes. If we 
are to continue to hold such outposts as Gibraltar, the duty of 
defending them against all comers might not improperly be en- 
trusted wholly or partly to the Sikhs or fiery little Goorkhas, on 
the ground that, while almost as brave as European troops, 
they are somewhat cheaper. It is possible, indeed, that, just 
as we draw our Goorkhas from independent Nepaul, other 
European nations may draw Sikhs from us. We are not even now 



CHAP. XII.] OUB INDIAN AR2IY. 495 

the only rulers who employ Sikhs in war ; the Khan of Kokand 
is said to have many in his service : and, tightly ruled at home, 
the Punjaubees may not improbably become the Swiss of Asia. 

Whatever the European force to be maintained in India, it is 
clear that it should be local. The Queen's army system has now 
had ten years' trial, and has failed in every point in which failure 
was prophesied. The officers, hating India, and having no 
knowledge of native languages or customs, bring our Govern- 
ment into contempt among the people; recruits in England 
dread enlistment for service they know not where ; and Indian 
taxpayers complain that they are forced to support an army 
over the disposition of which they have not the least control, 
and which in time of need would probably be withdrawn from 
India. Even the Dutch maintain a purely colonial force in 
Java, and the French have pledged themselves that, when they 
withdraw the Algerian local troops, they will replace them by 
regiments of the line. England and Spain alone maintain purely 
imperial troops at the expense of-their dependencies. 

Were the European army in India kept separate from the 
English service, it would be at once less costly and more 
efficient, while the officers would be acquainted with the habits 
of the natives and customs of the country, and not, as at present, 
mere birds of passage, careless of offending native prejudice, 
indifferent to the feelings of those among whom they have to 
live, and occupied each day of their idle life in heartily wishing 
themselves at home again. There are, indeed, to the existing 
system drawbacks more serious than have been mentioned. 
Sufficient stress has not hitherto been laid upon the demoraliza- 
tion of our army, and danger to our home freedom that must 
result from the keeping in India of half our regular force. It is 
hard to believe that men who have periodically to go through 
such scenes as those of 1857, or who are in daily contact with a 
cringing dark-skinned race, can in the long run continue to be 
firm friends to constitutional liberty at home ; and it should be 
remembered that the English troops in India, though under the 
orders of the Commander-in-Chief, are practically independent 
of the House of Commons. 

It is not only constitutionally that Indian rotation service is 
bad. The system is destructive to the discipline of our troops, 
and a separate service is the only remedy. 



496 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. xiii. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Russia. 

For fifty years or more, we have been warned that one day we 
must encounter Russia, and for fifty years Muscovite armies, 
conquering their way step by step, have been advancing south- 
ward, till we find England and Russia now all but face to face 
in Central Asia. 

Steadily the Russians are advancing. Their circular of 1864, 
in which they declared that they had reached their wished-for 
frontier, has been altogether forgotten, and all Kokand, and 
portions of Bokhara, have been swallowed up, while our spies 
in St. Petersburg tell the Indian Council that Persia herself is 
doomed. Although, however, the distance of the Russian from 
the English frontiers has been greatly reduced of late, it is still 
far more considerable than is supposed. Instead of the Russian 
outposts being 100 miles from Peshawur, as one alarmist has 
said, they are still 400 ; and Samarcand, their nearest city, is 
450 miles in a straight line over the summit of the Hindoo 
Koosh, and 750 by road from our frontier at the Khyber. At 
the same time, we must, in our calculations of the future, assume 
that a few years will see Russia at the northern base of the 
Hindoo Koosh, and in a position to overrun Persia, and take 
Herat. 

It has been proposed that we should declare to Russia our 
intention to preserve Afghanistan as neutral ground ; but there 
arises this difficulty, that having agreed to this plan, Russia 
would immediately proceed to set about ruling Afghanistan 
through Persia. On the other hand, it is impossible, as we 
have already found, to treat with Afghanistan, as there is no 
Afghanistan with which to treat ; nor can we enter into friendly 



CHAP, xm.] BUSSIA. 497 

relations with any Afghan chief, lest his neighbour and enemy 
should hold us responsible for his acts. If we are to have any 
dealings with the Afghans, we shall soon be forced to take a 
side, and necessarily to fight and conquer, but at a great cost in 
men and money. It might be possible to make friends of some 
of the frontier tribes by giving them lands within our borders 
on condition of their performing military service, and respecting 
the lives aiid property of our merchants ; but the policy would 
be costly, and its results uncertain, while we should probably 
soon find ourselves embroiled in Afghan politics. Moreover, 
meddling in Afghanistan, long since proved to be a foolish and 
a dangerous course, can hardly be made a wise one by the fact 
of the Russians being at the gate. 

Many would have us advance to Herat, on the ground that 
it is in Afghanistan, and not on the plains of India, that Russia 
must be met ; but such is the fierceness of the Afghans, such . 
the poverty of their country, that its occupation would be at 
once a source of weakness and a military trap to the invader. 
Were we to occupy Herat, we should have Persians and Afghans 
alike against us ; were the Russians to annex Afghanistan, they 
could never descend into the plains of India without a little 
diplomacy, or a little money from us, bringing the Afghan 
fanatics upon their rear. When, indeed, we look carefully into 
the meaning of those Anglo-Indians who would have us repeat 
our attempt to thrash the Afghans into loving us, we find that 
the pith of their complaint seems to be that battles and conquests 
mean promotion, and that we have no one left in India upon 
whom we can wage war. Civilians look for new appointments, 
military men for employment, missionaries for fresh fields, and 
all see their opening in annexation, while the newspapers echo 
the cry of their readers, and call on the Viceroy to annex 
Afghanistan " at the cost of impeachment." 

Were our frontier at Peshawur a good one for defence, there 
could be but little reason shown for an occupation of any part 
of Afghanistan ; but as it is, the question of the desirability of 
an advance is complicated by the lamentable weakness of our 
present frontier. Were Russia to move down upon India, we 
should have to meet her either in Afghanistan or upon the Indus : 
to meet her at Peshawur, at the foot of the mountains and with 

2 K 



498 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xiii. 

the Indus behind us, would be a miHtary suicide. Of the two 
x:ourses that would be open to us, a retreat to the Indus would be 
a terrible blow to the confidence of our. troops, and an advance 
to Cabool or Herat would be an advance out of reach of our 
railroad communications, and through a dangerous defile. To 
maintain our frontier force at Peshawur, as we now do, is to 
maintain in a pestilential valley a force which, if attacked, could 
not fight where it is stationed, but would be forced to advance 
into Afghanistan or retreat to the Indus. The best policy would 
probably be to withdraw the Europeans from Peshawur and 
Rawoil Pindee, and place them upon the Indus in the hills near 
Attock, completing our railroad from Attock to Lahore and 
from Attock to the hill station, and to leave the native force to 
defend the Khyber and Peshawur against the mountain tribes. 
We should also encourage European settlement in the valley of 
Cashmere. On the other hand, we should push a short railroad 
from the Indus to the Bholan Pass, and there concentrate a 
second powerful European force, with a view to resisting invasion 
at that point, and of taking in flank and rear any invader who 
might advance upon the Khyber. The Bholan Pass is, moreover, 
on the road to Candahar and Herat ; and, although it would be 
a mistake to occupy those cities except by the wish of the 
Afghans, still the advance of the Russians will probably one 
day force the Afghans to ally themselves to us, and sohcit the 
occupation of their cities. The fact that the present ruler of 
Herat is a mere tool of the Persians or feudatory of the Czar 
will have no effect whatever on his country, for if he once threw 
himself openly into Russian hands, his people would immediately 
desert him. So much for the means of defence against the 
Russians; but there is some chance that we may have to defend 
India against another Mohamedan invasion, secretly counte- 
nanced, but not openly aided by Russia. While on my way to 
England, I had a conversation on this matter with a well- 
informed Syrian Pacha, but notorious Russian-hater. He had 
been telling me that Russian policy had not changed, but was 
now, as ever, a policy of gradual annexation ; that she envied 
our position in India, and hated us because our gentle treatment 
of Asiatics is continually held up to her as an example. " Russia 
has attacked you twice in India, and will attack you there again," 



CHAP. XIII.] R USSIA. 499 

he said. i\dmitting her interference in the Afghan war, I denied 
that it was proved that she had any influence in Hindostan, or 
any hand in the rebehion of 1857. My friend made me no 
spoken answer, but took four caskets that stood upon the table, 
and, setting them in a row, with an interval between them, 
pushed the first so that it struck the second, the second the 
third, and the third the fourth. Then, looking up, he said, 
" There you have the manner of the Russian move on India. I 
push No. I, but you see No. 4 moves, i influences 2, 2 influ- 
ences 3, and 3 influences 4 ; but i doesn't influence 4. Oh, 
dear me, no ! Very likely even i and 3 are enemies, and hate 
each other ; and if 3 thought that she was doing I's work, she 
would kick over the traces at once. Nevertheless, she is doing 
it. In 1857, Russia certainly struck at you through Egv^pt, and 
probably through Central Asia also. Lord Palmerston was 
afraid to send troops through Egypt, though, if that could have 
been largely done, the mutiny could have been put down in 
half the time, and with a quarter the cost ; and Nana Sahib, in 
his proclamation, stated, not without reason, that Egypt was on 
his side. The way you are being now attacked is this : — Russia 
and Egypt are for the moment hand and glove, though their 
ultimate objects are conflicting. Eg}^t is plapng for the leader- 
ship of all Islam, even of Moslems in Central Asia and India. 
Russia sees that this game is for the time her game, as through 
Egypt she can excite the Turcomans, Afghans, and other 
Moslems of Central Asia to invade India in the name of religion 
and the Prophet, but, in fact, in the hope of plunder, and can 
also at the same time raise your ]\Iohamedan population in 
Hindostan — a population over which you have absolutely no 
hold. Of course you will defeat these hordes whenever you 
meet them in the field; but their numbers are incalculable, and 
their bravery great. India has twice before been conquered 
from the north, from Central Asia, and you must remember 
that behind these hordes comes Russia herself. ]Mohamedanism 
is weak here, on the Mediterranean, I grant you ; but it is Ytry 
strong in Central Asia — as strong as it ever was. Can you 
trust your Sikhs, too? I doubt it." 

When I asked the Pacha how Egy^pt was to put herself at 
the head of Islam, he answered : — " Thus. We Eg)^ptians are 

2 K 2 



500 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiii. 

already supporting the Turkish empire. Our tribute is a mil- 
hon (francs), but we pay five milhons, of which four go into 
the Sultan's privy . purse. We have all the leading men of 
Turkey in our pay : 10,060 of the best troops serving in Crete, 
and the whole of the fleet, are contributed by Egypt. Now, 
Egypt had no small share in getting up the Cretan insurrection, 
and yet, you see, she does, or pretends to do, her best to put it 
down. The Sultan, therefore, is at the Viceroy's mercy, if you 
don't interfere. No one else will if you do not. The Viceroy 
aims at being nominally, as he is really, '■ the Grand Turk,' 
Once Sultan, with Crete and the other islands handed over to 
Greece or Russia, the present Viceroy commands the allegiance 
of every Moslem people — thirty millions of your Indian subjects 
included ] that is, practically Russia commands that allegiance 
— Russia practically, though not nominally, at Constantinople 
wields the power of Islam, instead of being hated by every true 
believer, as she would be if she annexed Turkey in Europe. 
Her real game is a far grander one than that with which she is 
credited." " Turkey is your vassal," the Pacha went on to say ; 
" she owes her existence entirely to you. Why not use her, 
then ? Why not put pressure on the Sultan to exert his influ- 
ence over the Asian tribes — which is far greater than you 
believe — for your benefit ? Why not insist on your Euphrates 
route? Why not insist on Egypt ceasing to intrigue against 
you, and annex the country if she continues in her present 
course ? If you wish to bring matters to a crisis, make Abdul 
Aziz insist on Egypt being better governed, or on the slave- 
trade being put down. You have made your name a laughing- 
stock here. You let Egypt half bribe, half force Turkey into 
throwing such obstacles in the way of your Euphrates route 
that it is no nearer completion now than it ever was. You 
force Egypt to pass a law abolishing the slave-trade and slavery 
itself, and you have taken no notice of the fact that this law 
has never been enforced in so much as a single instance. You 
think that you are all right now that you have managed to force 
our Government into allowing your troops to pass to and fro 
through Egypt, thus making your road through the territory of 
your most dangerous enemy. Where would you be in case of 
a war with Russia ?" 



CHAP, xin,] . RUSSIA. 50T 

When I pleaded that, if we were refused passage, we should 
occupy the country, the Pacha replied : " Of course you would; 
but you need not imagine that you will ever be refused passage. 
What will happen will be that, just at the time of your greatest 
need, the floods will come down from the mountains, and wash 
away ten miles of the line, and all the engines will go out of 
repair. .You will complain : we shall offer to lay the stick 
about the feet of all the employes of the line. What more 
would you have ? Can we prevent the floods ? When our 
Government wished to keep your Euphrates scheme from 
coming to anything, did they say : "Do this thing, and we will 
raise Islam against you ?' Oh no ! they just bribed your sur- 
veyors to be attacked by the Bedouin, or they bribed a pacha 
to tell you that the water was alkaline and poisonous for the 
next hundred miles, and so on, till your company was ruined, 
and the plan at an end for some years. Your Home Govern- 
ment does not understand us Easterns. Why don't you put 
your Eastern affairs into the hands of your Indian Government? 
You have two routes to India — Egypt and Euphrates valley, 
and both are practically in the hands of your only great enemy 
— Russia." 

In all that my Syrian friend said of the danger of our relying 
too much upon our route across Egypt, and on the importance 
to us of the immediate construction of the Euphrates Valley 
Railway line, there is nothing but truth, but, in his fears of a 
fresh invasion of India by the Mohamedans, he forgot that for 
fighting purposes the Mohamedans are no longer one, but two 
peoples ; for the Moslem races are divided into Sonnites and 
Shiites, or orthodox and dissenting Mohamedans, who hate 
each other far more fiercely than they hate us. Our Indian 
Moslems are chiefly orthodox, the Persians are dissenters, the 
Turks are orthodox. If Egypt and Persia play Russia's game, 
we may count upon the support of the Turks of Syria, of the 
Euphrates valley, and of India. To unite Irish Catholics and 
Orangemen in a religious crusade against the English would be 
an easy task by the side of that of uniting Sonnite and Shiite 
against India. A merely Shiite invasion is always possible, but 
could probably be met with ease, by opposition at the Khyber, 
and resistance upon the Indus, followed by a rapid advance 



502 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xm. 

from the Bholan. Russia herself is not without her difficulties 
with the strictest and most fanatical Mohamedans. Now that 
she has conquered Bokhara, their most sacred land, they hate 
her as fiercely as they hate us. The crescentade, if she pro- 
vokes it, may be upon our side, and British commanders in 
green turbans may yet summon the Faithful to arms, and invoke 
the Prophet. 

It is to be remarked that men who have lived long in India 
think that our policy in the East has overwhelming claims on 
the attention of our home authorities. Not only is Eastern 
business to be performed, and Eastern intrigues watched care- 
fully ; but, according to these Indian flies, who think that their 
Eastern cart-wheel is the world. Oriental policy is to guide 
home policy, to dictate our European friendships, to cause our 
wars. 

No Englishman in England can sympathise with the ridiculous 
inability to comprehend our real position in India which leads 
many Anglo-Indians to cry out that we must go to war with 
Russia to " keep up our prestige ;" and, on the other hand, it 
need hardly be shown that, apart from the extension of trade 
and the improvement of communication, we need not trouble 
ourselves with alliances to strengthen us in the East. Supported 
by the native population, we can maintain ourselves in India 
against the world ; unsupported by it, our rule is morally indefen- 
sible, and therefore not long to be retained by force of arms. 

The natives of India watch with great interest the advance 
of Russia ; not that they believe that they would be any better 
off under her than under us, but that they would like, at all 
events, to see some one thrash us, even if in the end they lost 
by it ; just as a boy likes to see a new bully thrash his former 
master, even though the later be also the severer tyrant. 
That the great body of the people of India watch with feverish 
excitement the advance of Russia is seen from the tone of the 
native press, which is also of service to us in demonstrating 
that the mass of the Hindoos are incapable of appreciating the 
benefits, and even of comprehending the character, of our 
rule. They can understand the strength which a steady pur- 
pose gives ; they cannot grasp the principles which lie at the 
root of our half-mercantile, half-benevolent despotism. 



CHAP, xni.] RUSSIA. ' 503 

No native believes that we shall permanently remain in 
India ; no native really sympathised with us during the rebel- 
lion. To the people of India we English are a mystery. We 
profess to love them, and to be educating them for something 
they cannot comprehend, which we call freedom and self-go- 
vernment ; in the meantime, while we do not plunder them, nor 
convert them forcibly, after the wont of the Mogul emperors, 
we kick and cuff them all round, and degrade the nobles by 
ameliorating the condition of humbler men. 

No mere policy of disarmament or of oppression can be 
worth much as a system for securing lasting peace ; for if our 
Irish constabulary cannot prevent the introduction of Fenian 
arms to Cork and Dublin, how doubly impossible must it be to 
guard a frontier of five or six thousand miles by means of a 
police force which itself cannot be trusted ? That prolonged 
disarmament causes our subjects to forget the art of war is 
scarcely true, and if tme would tell both ways. The question 
is not one of disarmament, and suppression of rebellion : it is 
that of whether we can raise up in India a people that will 
support our rule ; and if this is to be done, there must be an 
end of cuffing. 

Were the Hindoos as capable of appreciating the best points 
of our government as they are of pointing out the worst, we 
should have nothing to fear in comparison with Russia. 
Drunken, dirty, ignorant, and corrupt, the Russian people are 
no fit rulers for Hindostan. Were our rival that which she 
pretends to be, — a civilized European Power with a " mission " 
in the East ; were she even, indeed, an enlightened commercial 
Power, with sufficiently benevolent instincts but with" no policy 
outside her pocket, such as England was till lately in the East, 
and is still in the Pacific, — we might find ourselves able to 
meet her with open arms, and to bring ourselves to believe 
that her advance into Southern Asia was a gain to mankind. 
As it is, the Russians form a barbarous horde, ruled by a Ger- 
man emperor and a German ministry, who, however, are as 
little able to suppress degrading drunkenness and shameless 
venality as they are themselves desirous of promoting true 
enlightenment and education. " Talk of Russian civilization 
of the East !" an Egyptian once said to me : "Why, Russia is 



504 GREATER BRITAIN. [cHAr. xiii. 

an organized barbarism -, why — the Russians are — why they 
are — why — nearly as bad as we are !" It should be remem- 
bered, too, that Russia, being herself lan Asiatic power, can 
never introduce European civilization into Asia. All the cry 
of "Russia! Russia!" all this magnifying of the Russian 
power, only means that the English, being the strong men most 
hated by the w^eak men of Southern Asia, the name of the next 
strongest is used to terrify them. The offensive strength of 
Russia has been grossly exaggerated by alarmists, who forget 
that, if Russia is to be strong in Bokhara and Khiva, it will be 
Bokharan and Khivan strength. In all our arguments we 
assume that with three-fourths of her power in Asia, and with 
her armies composed of Asians, Russia will remain a European 
Power. Whatever the composition of her forces, it may be 
doubted whether India is not a stronger empire than her new 
neighbour. The military expenditure of India is equal to that 
of Russia ; the homogeneousness of the Northern Power is at 
the best inferior to that of India ; India has twice the popula- 
tion of Russia, five times her trade, and as large a revenue. 
To the miserable military administration of Russia, Afghanistan 
would prove a second Caucasus, and by their conduct we see 
that the Afghans themselves are not terrified by her advance. 
The people with whom an Asiatic prince seeks alliances are 
not those whom he most fears. That the Afghans are con- 
tinually intriguing with Russia against us, merely means that 
they fear us more than they fear Russia. 

Russia will one day find herself encountering the English or 
Americans in China, perhaps, but not upon the plains of Hin- 
dostan. Wherever and whenever the contest comes, it can 
have but one result. Whether upon India or on England falls 
the duty of defence, Russia must be beaten. A country that 
was fifty years conquering the Caucasus, and that could never 
place a field-force of 60,000 men in the Crimea, need give no 
fear to India, while her grandest offensive efforts would be 
ridiculed by America, or by the England of to-day. To meet 
Russia in the way that we are asked to meet her means to 
meet her by corruption, and a system of meddling Eastern 
diplomacy is proposed to us which is revolting to our English 
nature. Let us by all means go our own way, and let Russia 



CHAP. XIII.] BUSSIA.. 505 

go hers. If we try to meet the Russian Orientals with craft, 
we shall be defeated ; let us meet them, therefore, with straight- 
forwardness and friendship, but, if necessary, in arms. 

It is not Russia that we need dread, but, by the destruction 
of the various nationalities in Hindostan by means of cen- 
tralization and of railroads, we have created an India which 
we cannot fight. India herself, not Russia, is our danger, and 
our task is rather to conciliate than to conquer. 



5o6 . GBEATEB BRITAIN. [chap. xiv. 



^"^ EST^BUSHEO 1575. 



chapw:r XIV. 

/)^ .^. n nJJ^mve States. 

night, I travelled to Moultan by a railway 
which has names for its stations such as India cannot match. 
Chunga-Munga, Wanrasharam, Cheechawutnee, and Chunnoo, 
follow one another in that order. During the night, when I 
looked out into the still moonlight, I saw only desert and 
trains of laden camels pacing noiselessly over the waste sands j 
but in the morning I found that the whole country within eye- 
shot was a howling wilderness. In every village, bagpipes 
were playing through the live-long night. There are many 
resemblances to the Gaelic races to be found in India; the 
Hindoo girl's saree is the plaid of the Galway peasantress, or 
of the Trongate fishwife ; the hill tribes wear the kilt ; but the 
Punjaubee pipes are like those of the Italian pfiferari rather 
than those of the Scotch Highlander. 

The great sandy desert which lies between the Indus and 
Rajpootana has, perhaps, a future under British rule. Wherever 
snowy mountains are met with in warm countries, yearly floods, 
the product of the thaws, sweep down the rivers that take their 
rise in the glaciers of the chain, and the Indus is no exception 
to the rule. Were the fall less great, the stream less swift, 
Scinde would have been another Cambodia, another Egypt. 
As it is, the fertilizing floods pour through the deep river bed 
instead of covering the land, and the silt is wasted on the 
Arabian Gulf No native State with narrow boundaries can 
deal with the great works required for irrigation on the scale 
that can alone succeed ; but, possessing as we do the country 
from the defiles whence the five rivers escape into the plains to 
the sandy bars at which they lose themselves in the Indian 



CHAP. XIV.] NATIYE STATES. 507 

Seas, we might convert the Punjaub and Scinde into a garden 
which should support a happy population of a hundred millions, 
reared under our rule, and the best of bulwarks against invasion 
from the north and west. .^**^' j V'^>V^-t~*"''~^ w 

At Umritsur, I had seen those jf^eat J6k'iiaTs tnat ar^ ^^i^^^>, 
mencing; to irrisjate and fertilize thj&'j^st deserts that stretch to' ^9 ^v. 
Scmde. At TuUundur, I had alrmdy seen^then* handiwork in f^ 
the fields of cotton, tobacco, ano wheat tiiUt' blds5orn!,^]i "^Jj^ 
middle of a wilderness ; and if the whole Punjaub and Indus 
valley can be made what Jullundii-t^is, -nc^ outlay can be too 
costly a means to such an end. There cah>15'es/n-0vrea^pn-why, \ 
with irrigation, the Indus valley should not'beeQnie.^slfejt-ile'aS"'" 
the valley of the Nile. 

After admiring in Moultan the grandeur of the citadel, which 
still shows signs of the terrible bombardment which it suffered 
at our hands after the murder by the Sikhs of Mr. Van Agnew 
in 1848, and the modesty of the sensitive mimosa which grows 
plentifully about the city, I set off by railway for Sher Shah, 
the point at which the railway comes to its end upon the banks 
of the united Jhelum and Chenab, two of the rivers of the 
Punjaub. The railway company once built a station on the 
river-bank at Sher Shah, but the same summer, when the floods 
came down, station and railway alike disappeared into the 
Indus. Embanking the river is impossible, from the cost of 
the works which would be needed; and building wing-dams 
has been tried, with the remarkable effect of sending off the 
river at right angles to the dam to devastate the country 
opposite. 

The railway has now no station at Sher Shah, but the 
Indus-steamer captains pick out a good place to lie alongside 
the bank, and the rails are so laid as to bring the trains along- 
side the ships. After seeing nothing but flat plains from the 
time of leaving Umritsur, I caught sight from Sher Shah of the 
great Sooleiman chain of the Afghan mountains, rising in black 
masses through the fiery mist that fills the Indus valley. 

I had so timed my arrival on board the river-boat that she 
sailed the next morning, and after a day's uneventful steaming, 
varied by much running aground, when we anchored for the 
night we were in the native State of Bhawulpore. 



5o8 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiv. 

While we were wandering about the river shore in the 
evening, I and my two or three European fellow-travellers, we 
met a native, with whom one of our number got into conver- 
sation. The Englishman had heard that Bhawulpore was to 
be annexed, so he asked the native whether he was a British 
subject, to which the answer was to the effect that he did not 
know. " To whom do you pay your taxes ?" " To the Govern- 
ment." "Which Government; the English Government or the 
Bhawulpore Government?" His answer was that he did not 
care so long as he had to pay them to somebody or other. 

Little as our Bhawulpore friend knew or cared about the' 
colour of his rulers, he was nevertheless, according to our 
Indian Government theories, one of the people who ought to 
be most anxious for the advent of English rule. Such has been 
the insecurity of life in Bhawulpore, that, of the six last viziers, 
five have been murdered by order of the Khan, the last of all 
having been strangled in 1862; and no native State has been 
more notorious than Bhawulpore for the extravagance and gross 
licentiousness of the reigning princes. The rulers of Bhawul- 
pore, although nominally controlled by us, have hitherto been 
absolute despots, and have frequently put to death their sub- 
jects out of mere whimsy. For years the country has been 
torn by ceaseless revolutions, to the ruin of the traders and the 
demoralization of the people ', the taxes have been excessive, 
peculation universal, and the army has lived at free quarters. 
The Khans were for many years in such dread of attempts 
upon their lives, that every dish for their table was tasted by 
the cooks ; the army was mutinous, all appointments bought 
and sold, and the Khans being Mohamedans, no one need 
pay a debt to a Hindoo. 

Bhawulpore is no exceptional case ; everywhere we hear of 
similar deeds being common in native States. One of the 
native rulers lately shot a man for killing a tiger that the rajah 
had wounded ; another flogged a subject for defending his 
wife ; abduction, adultery, and sale of wives are common among 
them. Land is seized from its holders without compensation 
being so much as offered to them ; extortion, torture, and 
denial of justice are common, open venality prevails in all 
ranks, and no native will take the pledged word of his king. 



CHAP. XIV.] NATIVE STATES. 509 

while the revenues, largely made up of forced loans, are wasted 
on all that is most vile. 

In a vast number of cases, the reigning families have de- 
generated to such an extent, that the sceptre has come into 
the hands of some mere driveller, whom, for the senselessness 
of his rule, it has at last been necessary to depose. Those 
who have made idiocy their study, know that in the majority of 
cases the infirmity is the last stage of the declension of a race 
worn out by hereditary perpetuation of luxury, vice, or disease 
the effect of vice. Every ruling family in the East, save such 
as slave-marriages have re-invigorated, is one of these mn- 
do\Mi and exhausted breeds. Not only unbounded tyranny 
and extortion, but incredible venality and corruption, prevail 
in the greater number of native States. The Rajah of Travan- 
core, as it is said, lately requiring some small bungalow to be 
added to a palace, a builder contracted to build it for 10,000 rs. 
After a time, he came to apply to be let off, and on the Rajah 
asking him the reason, he said : " Your highness, of the 
10,000 rs., your prime minister will get 5000 rs., his secretary 
1000 rs., the baboos in his office another 2000 rs., the ladies 
of the zenana 1000 rs., and the commander of your forces 
500 rs. ; now, the bungalow itself will cost 500 rs., so where 
am I to make my profit ?" Corruption, however, pervades in 
India all native institutions; it is not enough to show. that 
native States are subject to it, unless we can prove that it 
is worse there than in our o^^ti dominions. 

The question whether British or native rule be the least dis- 
tasteful to the people of India is one upon which it is not easy 
to decide. It is not to be expected that our Government 
should be popular with the Rajpoot chiefs, or with the great 
nobles of Oude, but it may fairly be contended that the mass 
of the people live in more comfort, and, in spite of the Orissa 
case, are less likely to starve, in English, than in native terri- 
tory. No nation has at any time ever governed an alien 
empire more msely or justly than we the Punjaub. The men 
who cry out against our rule are the nobles and the schemers, 
who, under it, are left without a hope. Our levelling rule does 
not even, like other democracies, raise up a military chieftain- 
ship. Our native officers of the highest rank are paid and 



510 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiv. 

treated much as are European sergeants, though in native 
States they would of course be generals and princes. 

Want of promotion for sepoys and educated native civilians, 
and the degrading treatment of the high-caste people by the 
English, were causes, among others, of the mutiny. The treat- 
ment of the natives cannot easily be reformed ; if we punish or 
discourage such behaviour in our officers, we cannot easily 
reach the European planters and the railway officials, while 
punishment itself would only make men treat the natives with 
violence instead of mere disdain when out of sight of their 
superiors. There is, however, reason to believe that in many 
districts the people are not only well off under our Governm^ent, 
but that they know it. During the native rule in Oude, the popu- 
lation was diminished by a continual outpour of fugitives. The 
British district of Mirzapore Chowhare, on the Oude frontiers, 
had a rural population of over looo to each square mile — a 
density entirely owing to the emigration of the natives from 
their villages in Oude. Again, British Burmah is draining of 
her people Upper Burmah, which remains under the old rulers ; 
and throughout India the eye can distinguish British territories 
from the native States by the look of prosperity which is borne 
by all our villages. 

The native merchants and townsfolk generally are our friends. 
It is unfortunately the fact, however, that the cultivators of the 
soil, who form three-fourths of the population of India, believe 
themselves worse off under us than in the native States. They 
say that they care not who rules so long as their holdings are 
secured to them at a fixed rent, whereas under our system the 
zemindars pay us a fixed rent, but in many districts exact what 
they please from the competing peasants — a practice which, 
under the native system, was prevented by custom. In all our 
future land settlements, it is to be hoped that the agreement 
will be made, not with middle-men, but directly with the people. 

It is not difficult to lay down certain rules for our future 
behaviour towards the native States. We already exercise over 
the whole of them a control sufficient to secure ourselves 
against attack in time of peace, but not sufficient to relieve us 
from all fear of hostile action in time of internal revolt or 
external war. It might be well that we should issue a pro- 



CHAP. XIV.] NATIVE STATES. 511 

clamation declaring that, for the future, we should invariably 
re'cognise the practice of adoption of children by the native 
rulers, as we have done in the case of the Mysore succession ; 
but that, on the other hand, we should require the gradual dis- 
bandment of all troops not needed for the preservation of 
internal peace. We might well commence our action in this 
matter by calling upon the native rulers to bind themselves by 
treaty no longer to keep up artillery. In the event of an 
invasion of Hindostan, a large portion of our European force 
would be needed to overawe the native princes, and prevent 
their marching upon our rear. It is impossible to believe that 
the native States would ever be of assistance to us except in 
cases where we could do without their help. During the 
mutiny, the Nepaulese delayed their promised march to join 
us until they were certain that we should beat the mutineers, 
and this although the Nepaulese are among our surest friends. 
After the mutiny, it came to light that Lucknow and Delhi — 
then native capitals — had been centres of intrigue, although we 
had " Residents " at each, and it is probable that Hyderabad 
and Srinuggur are little less dangerous to us now than was 
Delhi in 1857. 

There is one native State, that of Cashmere and Jummoo, 
which stands upon a very different footing to the rest. Created 
by us as late as 1846, — when we sold this best of all the 
provinces conquered by us from the Maharajahs of Lahore to a 
Sikh traitor, Gholab Singh, an ex-farmer of taxes, for three- 
quarters of a million sterling, which he embezzled from the 
treasury of Lahore, — the State of Cashmere has been steadily 
misgoverned for twenty years. Although our tributary, the 
Maharajah of Cashmere forbids English travellers to enter his 
dominions without leave (which is granted only to a fixed 
number of persons every year), to employ more than a stated 
number of servants, to travel except by certain passes for fear 
of their meeting his wives, to buy provisions except of certain 
persons, or to remain in the country after the ist November 
under any circumstances whatever. He imprisons all native 
Christians, prohibits the exportation of grain whenever there is 
a scarcity in our territory, and takes every opportunity that falls 
in his way of insulting our Government and its officials. Our 



5 12 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiv. 

Central Asian trade has been all but entirely destroyed by the 
duties levied by his officers, and Russia is the Maharajah's 
chosen friend. The unhappy people of the Cashmere valley, 
sold by us, without their consent or knowledge, to a family 
which has never ceased to oppress them, petition us continually 
for relief, and, by flocking into our Punjaub territory, give prac- 
tical testimony to the wrongs they suffer. 

In this case of Cashmere, there is ample ground for imme- 
diate repurchase or annexation, if annexation it can be called to 
remove or buy out a feudatory family which was unjustly raised 
to power by us twenty-two years ago, and which has broken 
every article of the agreement under which it was placed upon 
the tributary throne. The only reason which has ever been 
shown against the resumption by us of the government of the 
Cashmere Valley is the strange argument that, by placing it in 
the hands of a feudatory, we save the expense of defending the 
frontier against the dangerous hill-tribes ; although the revenues 
of the province, even were taxation much reduced, would amply 
suffice to meet the cost of continual war, and although our 
experience in Central India has shown that many hill-tribes 
which will not submit to Hindoo rajahs become peaceable at 
once upon our annexation of their country. Were Cashmere 
independent and in the hands of its old rulers, there would be 
ample ground for its annexation in the prohibition of trade, the 
hindrance to the civiHzation of Central Asia, the gross oppres- 
sion of the people, the existence of slavery, and the imprison- 
ment of Christians ; as it is, the non-annexation of the country 
almost amounts to a crime against mankind. 

Although the necessity of consolidation of our empire and 
the progressive character of our rule are reasons for annexing 
the whole of the native States, there are other and stronger 
arguments in favour of leaving them as they are ; our policy 
towards the Nizam must be regulated by the consideration that 
he is now the head of the Moslem power in India, and that his 
influence over the Indian Mohamedans may be made useful to 
us in our dealings with that dangerous portion of our people. 
Our military arrangements with the Nizam are, moreover, on 
the best of footings. Scindia is our friend, and no bad ruler, 
but some interference may be needed with the Guicowar of 



CHAP. XIV.] NATIVE STATES. 513 

Baroda and with Holkar. Our policy towards Mysore is now 
declared, and consists in respecting the native rule if the young 
prince proves himself capable of good government, and we 
might impose similar conditions upon the remaining princes, 
and also suppress forced labour in their States as we have all 
but suppressed suttee. 

In dealing with the native princes, it is advisable that we 
should remember that we are no interlopers of to-day coming 
in to disturb families that have been for ages the rulers of the 
land. Many of the greatest of the native families were set up 
by ourselves ; and of the remainder, few, if any, have been in 
possession of their countries so long as have the English of 
Madras or Bombay. 

The Guicowars of Baroda and the family of Holkar are 
descended from cowherds, and that of Scindia from a peasant, 
and none of them date back much more than a hundred years. 
The family of the Nabobs of Arcot, founded by an adventurer, 
is not more ancient, neither is that of Nizam : the great Hyder 
Ali was the son of a police-constable, and was unable to read 
or write. The first Peishwar was a jeweller ; the first King of 
Oude a slave of the Mogul. While we should suspiciously 
adhere to the treaties that we have made, we are bound, in the 
interests of humanity, to intervene in all cases where it is 
certain that the mass of the people would prefer our rule, and 
where they are suffering under slavery or gross oppression. 

Holkar has permitted us to make a railway across his ter- 
ritory, but he levies such enormous duties upon goods in transit 
as to cramp the development of trade in a considerable portion 
of our dominions. Now, the fact that a happy combination of 
circumstances enabled the cowherd, his ancestor, to seize upon 
a certain piece of territory a hundred years ago, can have given 
his descendants no prescriptive right to impede the civilization 
of India ; all that we must aim at is to so improve our govern- 
mental system as to make the natives themselves see that our 
rule means the moral advancement of their country. 

The best argument that can be made use of against our rule 
is that its strength and minuteness enfeeble the native cha- 
racter. When we annex a State, we put an end to promotion 
alike in war and learning ; and under our rule, unless it change 

2 L 



514 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xiv. 

its character, enlightenment must decHne in India, however 
much material prosperity may increase. 

Under our present system of exclusion of natives from the 
Indian Civil Service, the more boys we educate, the more 
vicious and discontented men we have beneath our rule. Were 
we to throw it open to them, under a plan of competition which 
would admit to the service even a small number of natives, we 
should at least obtain a valuable body of friends in those 
admitted, and should make the excluded feel that their exclu- 
sion was in some measure their own fault. As it is, we not 
only exclude natives from our own service, but even to some 
extent from that of the native States, whose levies are often 
drilled by English officers. The Guicowar of Baroda's service 
is popular with Englishmen, as it has become a custom that 
when he has a review he should present each of his officers 
with a year's ffill pay. 

Our plan of shutting out the natives from all share in the 
government not only makes our rule unpopular, but gives rise 
to the strongest of all the arguments in favour of the retention 
of the existing native States, which is, that they offer a career 
to shrewd and learned natives, who otherwise would spend 
their leisure in devising plots against us. One of the ablest 
men in India, Madhava Rao, now premier of Travancore, was 
born in our territory, and was senior scholar of his year in the 
Madras College. That such men as Madhava Rao and Salar 
Jung should be unable to find suitable employment in our 
service is one of the standing reproaches of our rule. 

Could we but throw open our services to the natives, our 
Government might, with advantage to civilization, be extended 
over the whole of the native States ; for whether we are ever to 
leave India or whether we are to remain there till the end of 
time, there can be no doubt but that the course best adapted to 
raise the moral condition of the natives is to mould Hindostan 
into a homogeneous empire sufficiently strong to stand by itself 
against all attacks from without, and internally governed by 
natives, under a gradually weakened control from at home. If, 
after careful trial, we find that we cannot educate the people to 
become active supporters of our power, then it will be time to 
make use of the native princes and grandees ; but it is to be 



CHAP. XIV.] NA TIVE 8TA TE8. 5 1 5 

hoped that the people, as they become well-taught, will also 
become the mainstay of our democratic rule. 

The present attitude of the mass of the people is one of 
indifference and neutrality, which in itself lends a kind of 
passive strength to our rule. During the mutiny of 1857, the 
people neither aided nor opposed us ; and even had the whole 
of the landowners been against us, as were those of Oude, it is 
doubtful whether they could have raised their villagers and 
peasants. Were our policemen relatively equal to their officers 
and to the magistrates, we should never hear of native dis- 
affection; but we cannot count upon the attacliment of the 
people so long as it is possible for our constables to procure 
confessions by the bribery of villagers, or the application of 
pots full of wasps to their stomachs. 

In the matter of the annexation of those native States which 
still cumber the earth, we are not altogether free agents. We 
swallow up States like Bhawulpore just as Russia consumes 
Bokhara. Everywhere indeed, in Asia, strong countries must 
inevitably devour their weaker neighbours. Failure of heirs, 
broken treaties, irregular frontiers — all these are reasons or 
assumed reasons for advance ; but the end is certain, and is 
exemplified in the march of England from Calcutta to Peshawur 
and of Russia from the Aral to Turkestan. Our experience in 
the case of the Punjaub shows that even honest discourage- 
ment of farther advances on the part of the rulers of the stronger 
power will not always suffice to prevent annexation. 



2 L 2 



5i6 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. xv. 



CHAPTER XV. 

SCINDE. 

Near Mithun Kote, we steamed suddenly into the main stream 
of the Indus, the bed of which is here a mile and a quarter 
wide. Although the river at the time of my visit was rising 
fast, it was far from being at its greatest height. In January, 
it brings down but forty thousand cubic feet of water every 
second, but in August it pours down four hundred and fifty 
thousand. The river-bed is rarely covered with running water, 
but the stream cuts a channel for itself upon one shore, and 
flows in a current of eight or nine miles an hour, while the 
remainder of the bed is filled with half-liquid sand. 

The navigation of the Indus is monotonous enough. Were 
it not for the climate, the view would resemble that on the 
Maas, near Rotterdam, though with alligators lining the banks 
instead of logs .from the Upper Meuse ; but climate affects 
colour, and every country has tints of its own. Cafifomia is 
golden, New Zealand a black-green, Australia yellow, the Indus 
valley is of a blazing red. Although every evening the Beloo- 
chee mountains came in sight as the sun sank down behind 
them, and revealed their shapes in shadow, all through the day 
the landscape was one of endless flats and burning solitudes. 
The river is a dirty flood, now swift, now sluggish, running 
through a country in which sand deserts alternate only with 
fields of stone. Villages upon the banks there are none, and 
from town to town is a day's journey at the least. The only 
life in the view is given by an occasional sail of gigantic size 
and curious shape, belonging to some native craft or other on 
her voyage from the Punjaub to Kurrachee. On our journey 
down the Indus, we passed hundreds of ships, but met not one. 



CHAP. XV.] SCINDE. ^i-j 

They are built of timber, which is plentiful in the Himalayas, 
upon the head waters of the river, and carry down to the sea 
the produce of the Punjaub. The stream is so strong, that the 
ships are broken up in Scinde, and the crews walk back looo 
miles along the bank. In building his ships upon the Hydaspes, 
and sailing them down the Indus to its mouth, Alexander did 
but follow the custom of the country. The natives, however, 
break up~ their ships at Kotree, whereas the Macedonian en- 
trusted his to Nearchus for the voyage to the Gulf of Persia, 
and a survey of the coast. 

Geographically, the Indus valley is but a portion of the Great 
Sahara. Those who know the desert well, say that from Cape 
Blanco to Khartoom, from Khartoom to Muscat, from Muscat 
to Moultan, the desert is but one ; the same in the absence of 
life ; the same great sea of sand. The valley of the Nile is but 
an oasis, the Gulfs of Persia and of Aden are but trifling breaks 
in its vast width. Rainless, swept by dry hot winds laden with 
prickly sand, traversed everywhere by low ranges of red and 
sunburnt rocks, strewn with jagged stones, and dotted here and 
there with a patch of dates gathered about some ancient well, 
such is the Sahara for a length of near six thousand miles. 

Our days on board were all passed upon one plan. Each 
morning we rose at dawn, which came about half-past four, 
and, watching the starting of the ship from the bank where she 
had been moored all night, we got a cool walk in our sleeping 
clothes before we bathed and dressed. The heat then suffo- 
cated us quietly till four, when we would reassert the majesty 
of man by bathing, and attempting to walk or talk till dinner, 
which was at five. At dark we anchored, and after watching 
the water-turtles at their play, or hunting for the monstrous 
water-lizards known as " gos," — apparently the ichneumons 
called in Egypt " gots," — or sometimes fishing for great mud- 
fish with wide mouths and powerful teeth, we would resume our 
sleeping clothes (in which, but for the dignity of the Briton in 
the eyes of the native crew, we should have dined and spent 
the day). At half-past seven or eight, we lay down on deck, 
and forgot our sorrows in sleep, or engaged in a frantic struggle 
with the cockroaches. In the latter conflict we — in our dreams 
at least — were not victorious, and once in an awful trance I 



5i8 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xv. 

believed myself carried off by one leg in the jaws of a gigantic 
cockroach, and pushed with his feelers down his horrid hole. 

Each hour passed on the Indus differs from the others only 
in the greater or less portion of it which is devoted to getting 
off the sand-banks. After steaming gallantly down a narrow 
but deep and swift piece of the river, we would come to a spot 
at which the flood would lose itself in crossing its bed from one 
bank to the other. Backing the engines, but being whirled 
along close to the steep bank by the remaining portion of the 
current, we soon felt a shock, the recoil from which upset us, 
chairs and all, it being noticeable that we always fell up stream, 
and not with our heads in the direction in which the ship was 
going. As soon as we were fairly stuck, the captain flew at the 
pilot, and kicked him round the deck — a process always borne 
with fortitude, although the pilot was changed every day. The 
only pilot never kicked was one who came on board near Bhawul- 
pore, and who carried a jewelled tulwar, or Afghan scimitar, 
but even he was threatened. The kicking over, an entry of the 
time of grounding was made by the captain in the pilot's book, 
and the mate was ordered out in a boat to sound, while the 
native soldiers on board the flats we were towing began quietly 
to cook their dinner. The mate having found a sort of channel, 
though sometimes it had a ridge across it over which the 
steamer could not pass without touching, he returned for a 
kedge, which he fixed in the sand, and we were soon warped 
up to it by the use of the capstan, the native crew singing 
merrily the while. Every now and then, however, we would 
take the ground in the centre of the ship, and with deep water 
all round, and then, instead of getting off, we for hours together 
only pivoted round and round. One of the Indus boats, with 
a line regiment on board, was once aground for a month near 
Mithun Kote, to the entire destruction of all the wild boars in 
the neighbourhood. 

The kicking of the unfortunate pilots was not a pleasant 
sight, but there were sometimes comic incidents attached to 
our periodic groundings. Once I noticed that the five men 
who were constantly sounding with coloured poles in different 
parts of the ship and flats, had got into a monotonous chorus 
of '' panche e pot " (" five feet ") — we drawing only three. 



CHAP. XV.] SCINDE, 519 

SO that we went ahead confidently at full speed, when suddenly 
we ran aground with a violent shock. On the re-sounding of 
our course by the boat's crew, we found that our pole-men 
must, for some time past, have been guessing the soundings to 
save the trouble of looking. These fellows richly deserved a 
kicking, but the pilots are innocent of any fault but inability to 
keep pace with the rapid changes of the river-course. 

Another curious scene took place one day when we were 
steaming down a reach in which the river made many sudden 
twists and turns. We had on board a merchant from the 
Persian Gulf, a devout Mohamedan. In the afternoon, he 
carried his praying-carpet on to the bridge between the paddle- 
boxes, and there, turning to the west, commenced to pray. 
The sun was on his left, but almost facing him; in an instant, 
round whirled the ship, making her course between two sand- 
bars, and Mecca and the sun into the bargain were right 
behind our worshipper. This was too much even for his devo- 
tion, so, glancing at the new course, he turned his carpet, and, 
looking in the fresh direction, recommenced his prayers. After 
a minute or two, back went the ship, and we began again to 
steer a southerly course. All this time the Persian kept his 
look of complete abstraction, and remained unshaken through 
all his difficulties. This seriousness in face of events which 
would force into shouts of laughter any European congregation 
is a characteristic of a native. It is strange that Englishmen 
are nowhere so easily provoked to loud laughter as in a church 
or college chapel, natives at no time so insusceptible of ridicule 
as when engaged upon the services of their religions. 

The shallowness of the Indus, its impracticability for steam- 
ships during some months of the year, and the many windings 
of the stream — all these things make it improbable that the 
river will ever be largely available for purposes of trade ; at the 
same time, the Indus valley must necessarily be the line taken 
by the commerce of the Punjaub, and eventually by that of 
some portions of Central Asia, and even of Southern China. 
Whether Kurrachee becomes our great Indian port, or whether 
our railway be made through Beloochistan, a safe and speedy 
road up the Indus valley for troops and trade is needed. 

If we take into consideration the size of India, the amount 



520 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xv. 

of its revenues, and the length of time during which we have 
occupied that portion of its extent which we at present hold, it 
is impossible to avoid the conclusion that not even in Australia 
have railways been more completely neglected than they have 
been in India. We have opened but 4000 miles, or one mile 
for every 45,000 people. Nothing has been touched as yet but 
the Grand Trunk and great- military and postal routes, and 
even these are little more than half completed. Even the 
Bombay and Calcutta mail line and the Calcutta and Lahore 
lines are hardly finished ; the Peshawur line and the Indus 
road not yet begun. While at home people believe that the 
Euphrates Valley Railway is under consideration, they will find, 
if they come out to India, that to reach Peshawur in 34° N. 
latitude, they must go to Bombay in 18°, if not to Galle in 6°. 
Even if they reach Kurrachee, they will find it a month's 
journey to Peshawur. While we are trying to tempt the wool 
and shawls of Central Asia down to Umritsur and Lahore, the 
goods with which we would buy these things are sent round by 
the Cape of Good Hope and Calcutta. 

It is true that the Indus line will be no easy one to make. 
To bridge the river at Mithun Kote or even at Kotree would 
be difficult enough, and were it to be bridged at Sukkur, where 
there is rock, and a narrow pass upon the river, the line from 
Sukkur to Kurrachee would be exposed to depredation from 
the frontier tribes. The difficulties are great, but the need is 
greater, and the argument of the heavy cost of river-side rail- 
roads should not weigh with us in the case of lines required for 
the safety of the country. The Lahore and Peshawur, the 
Kotree and Moultan, the Kotree and Baroda, and the Baroda 
and Delhi lines, instead of being set one against the other for 
comparison, should be simultaneously completed as necessary 
for the defence of the empire, and as forming the trunk lines 
for innumerable branches into the cotton and wheat-growing 
districts. 

One of the branches of the Indus line will have to be con- 
structed from the Bholan Pass to Sukkur, where we lay some 
days embarking cotton. Sukkur lies on the Beloochistan side ; 
Roree fort — known as the " Key of Scinde," the seizure of which 
by us provoked the great war with the Ameers — on an island in 



CHAP. XV.] SCIXDE. 521, 

mid-Stream ; and Bukkur city on the eastern or left bank, and 
the river, here narrowed to a width of a quarter of a mile, runs 
with the violence of a mountain torrent. 

Sukkur is one of the most ancient of Indian cities, and was 
mentioned as time-worn by the Greek geographers, while tra- 
dition says that its antiquities attracted Alexander ; but towns 
grow old with great rapidity in India, and, once ancient in their 
look, never to the eye become in the slightest degree older. 

In Sukkur I first saw the Scindee cap, which may be described 
as a tall hat with the brim atop, but the Scindees were not the 
only strangely-dressed traders in Sukkur and Roree : there were 
high-capped Persians, and lean Afghans with long gaunt faces 
and high cheek-bones, and furred merchants from Central Asia. 
It is even said that goods find their way overland from China to 
Sukkur, through Eastern Persia and Beloochistan, the traders 
preferring to come round four thousand miles than to cross the 
main chain of the Himalayas, or pass through the country of the 
Afghans. 

In ancient times there was considerable intercourse between 
China and Hindostan ; at the end of the seventh century, indeed, 
the Chinese invaded India through Nepaul, and captured five 
hundred cities. It is to be hoped that the next few years may 
see a railway built from Rangoon to Southern China, and from 
Calcutta to the Yang-tse-Kiang, a river upon which there are 
ample stores of coal, which would supply the manufacturing 
wants of India. 

After viewing from a lofty tower the flat country in the direc- 
tion of Shikapore, we spent one of our Sukkur evenings upon 
the island of Roree watching the natives fishing. Casting them- 
selves into the river on the top of skins full of air, or more com- 
monly on great earthenware pitchers,^ they floated at a rapid 
pace down ^vith the whirling stream, pushing before them a 
sunken net which they could close and lift by the drawing of a 
string. About twice a minute they would strike a fish, and, 
lifting their head, would impale the captive on a stick slung 
behind their back, and at once lower again the net in readiness 
for further action. 

Sukkur, like seven other places that I had visited within a 
year, has the reputation of being the hottest city in the world, 



522 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xv. 

and the joke on the boats of the Indus flotilla is that Moultan 
is too hot to bear, and Sukkur much hotter ; but that Jacobabad, 
on the Beloochee frontier, near Sukkur, is so hot that the people 
come down thence to Sukkur for the hot season, and find its 
coolness as refreshing as ordinary mortals do that of Simla. 
Hot as is Sukkur, it is fairly beaten by a spot at the foot of the 
Ibex Hills, near Sehwan. I was sleeping on the bridge with an 
officer from Peshawur, when the crew were preparing to put off 
from the bank for the day's journey. We were awakened by 
the noise, but, as we sat up and rubbed our eyes, a blast of hot 
wind came down from the burnt-up hills, laden with fine sand, 
and of such a character that I got a lantern — for it was not 
fully light — and made my way to the deck thermometer. I 
found it standing at 104°, although the hour was 4.15 a.m. 
At breakfast time it had fallen to 100°, from which it slowly 
rose, until at i p.m. it registered 116° in the shade. The next 
night it never fell below 100°. This was the highest tempera- 
ture I experienced in India during the hot weather, and it was, 
singularly enough, the same as the highest which I recorded in 
Australia. No part of the course of the Indus is within the 
tropics, but it is not in the tropics that the days are hottest, 
although the nights are generally unbearable on sea-level near 
the equator. 

, At Kotree, near Hydrabad, the capital of Scinde, we left the 
Indus for the railway, and, after a night's journey, found our- 
selves upon the sea-shore at Kurrachee. 



523 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Overland Routes. 

Of all the towns in India, Kurrachee is the least Indian. With 
its strong south-westerly breeze, its open sea and dancing waves, 
it is to one coming from the Indus valley a pleasant place 
enough ; and the climate is as good as that of Alexandria, 
though there is at Kurrachee all the dust of Cairo. For a 
stranger detained against his will to find Kurrachee bearable 
there must be something refreshing in its breezes : the towTi 
stands on a treeless plain, and of sights there are none, unless 
it be the sacred alligators at Muggur Peer, where the tame 
" man-eaters " spring at a goat for the visitor's amusement as 
freely as the Wolfsbrunnen trout jump at the gudgeon. 

There is no reason given why the alligators' pool should be 
reputed holy, but in India places easily acquire sacred fame. 
About Peshawur there dwell many hill-fanatics, whose sole 
religion appears ■ to consist in stalking British sentries. So 
many of them have been locked up in the Peshawur gaol that 
it has become a holy place, and men are said to steal and riot 
in the streets of the bazaar in order that they may be consigned 
to this sacred temple. 

The nights were noisy in Kurrachee, for the great Mohame- 
dan feast of the Mohurrum had commenced, and my bungalow 
was close to the lines of the police, who are mostly Belooch 
Mohamedans. Every evening at dusk, fires were lighted in the 
poHce-lines and the bazaar, and then the tomtom-ing gradually 
increased from the gentle drone of the daytime until a perfect 
storm of " tom-a-tom, tomtom, tom-a-tom, tomtom," burst from 
all quarters of the town, and continued the whole night long, 
relieved only by blasts from conch-shells and shouts of " Shah 



524 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xvi. 

Hassan ! Shah Hoosein ! Wah Allah ! Wah Allah !" as the per- 
formers danced round the flames. I heartily wished myself in 
the State of Bhawulpore, where there is a licence-tax on the 
beating of drums at feasts. The first night of the festival I 
called up a native servant who " spoke English," to make him 
take me to the fires and explain the matter. His only explana- 
tion was a continual repetition of " Dat Mohurrum, Mohamedan 
Christmas-day." When each night, about da^^Ti, the tomtom-ing 
died away once more, the chokedars — or night watchmen — woke 
up from their sound sleep, and began to shout " Ha ha !" into 
every room to show that they were awake. 

The chokedars are well-known characters in every Indian 
station : always either sleepy and useless, or else in league with 
the thieves, they are nevertheless a recognised class, and are 
everywhere employed. At Rawul-Pindee and Peshawur, the 
chokedars are armed with guns, and it is said that a newly- 
arrived English officer at the former place was lately returning 
from a dinner-party, when he was challenged by the chokedar 
of the first house he had to pass. Not knowing what reply to 
make, he took to his heels, when the chokedar fired at him as 
he ran. The shot woke all the chokedars of the parade, and 
the unfortunate officer received the fire of every man as he 
passed along to his house at the farther end of the lines, which 
he reached, however, in perfect safety. It has been suggested 
that, for the purpose of excluding all natives from the lines at 
night, there should be a shibboleth or standing pa.role of some 
word which no native can pronounce. The word suggested is 
" Shoeburyness." 

Although chokedars were silent and tomtom-ing subdued 
during the daytime, there were plenty of other sounds. Lizards 
chirped from the walls of my room, and sparrows twittered from 
every beam and rafter of the roof. When I told a Kurrachee 
friend that my slippers, brushes, and soldier's writing-case had 
all been thrown by me on to the chief beam during an unsuc- 
cessful attempt to dislodge the enemy, he repHed that for his 
part he paraded his drawing-room every morning with a double- 
ban-elled gun, and frequently fired into the rafters, to the horror 
of his wife. 

In a small lateen-rigged yacht lent us by a fellow-traveller 



CHAP. XVI.] OVERLAND ROUTES. 525 

from Moultan, some of us visited the works which have long 
been in progress for the improvement of the harbour of Kurra- 
chee, and which form the sole topic of conversation among the 
residents in the town. The works have for object the removal 
of the bar which obstructs the entrance to the harbour, with a 
view to permit the entry of larger ships than can at present find 
an anchorage at Kurrachee. 

The most serious question under discussion is that of whether 
the bar is formed by the Indus silt or merely by local causes, 
as, if the former supposition is correct, the ultimate disposition 
of the ten thousand millions of cubic feet of mud which the 
Indus annually brings down is not likely to be affected by such 
works as those in progress at Kurrachee. When a thousand 
sealed bottles were lately thrown into the Indus for it to be seen 
whether they would reach the bar, the result of the " great bottle 
trick," as Kurrachee people called it, was that only one bottle 
reached, and not one weathered, a point six miles to the south- 
ward of the harbour. The bar is improving every year, and has 
now some twenty feet of water, so that ships of 1000 tons can 
enter except in the monsoon, and the general belief of engineers 
is that the completion of the present works will materially in- 
crease the depth of water. 

The question of this bar is not one of merely local interest : 
a single glance at the map is sufficient to show the importance 
of Kurrachee. Already rising at an unprecedented pace, having 
trebled her shipping and quadrupled her trade in ten years, she 
is destined to make still greater strides as soon as the Indus 
Railway is completed ; and finally — when the Persian Gulf 
route becomes a fact — to be the greatest of the ports of India. 

That a railway must one day be completed from Constanti- 
nople or from some port on the Mediterranean to Bussorah on 
the Persian Gulf is a point which scarcely admits of doubt. 
From Kurrachee or Bombay to London by the Euphrates valley 
and Constantinople is all but a straight line, while from Bombay 
to London by Aden and Alexandria is a wasteful curve. The 
so-called " Overland Route " is half as long again as would be 
the direct line. The Red Sea and Isthmus route has neither 
the advantage of unbroken sea nor of unbroken land transit ; 
the direct route with a bridge near Constantinople might be 



5 26 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xvi. 

extended into a land road from India to Calais or Rotterdam. 
The Red Sea line passes along the shores of Arabia, where 
there is comparatively little local trade ; the Persian Gulf route 
would develop the remarkable wealth of Persia, and would carry- 
to Europe a local commerce already great. At the entrance of 
the Persian Gulf, near Cape Mussendoom or Ormuz, we should 
establish a free port on the plan of Singapore. In looo a.d., 
the spot now known as Ormuz was a barren rock, but a few 
years of permanent occupation of the spot as a free port changed 
the barren islet into one of the wealthiest cities in the world. 
The Red Sea route crosses Egypt, the direct route crosses 
Turkey ; and it cannot be too strongly urged that in war time 
" Egypt " means Russia or France, while " Turkey " means Great 
Britain. 

In any scheme of a Constantinople and Gulf railroad, Kurra- 
chee would play a leading part. Not only the wheat and the 
cotton of the Punjaub and of the then irrigated Scinde, but the 
trade of Central Asia would flow down the Indus, and it is hardly 
too much to believe that the silks of China, the teas of Northern 
India, and the shawls of Cashmere will all of them one day find 
in Kurrachee their chief port. The earliest known overland 
route was that by the Persian Gulf. Chinese ships traded to 
Ormuz in the fifth and seventh centuries, bringing silk and iron ; 
and it may be doubted whether any of the Russian routes will 
be able to compete with the more ancient Euphrates valley line 
of trade. Shorter, passing through countries well known and 
comparatively civilized, admitting at once of the use of land and 
water transport side by side, it is far superior in commercial 
and political advantages to any of the Russian desert roads. A 
route through Upper Persia has been proposed, but merchants 
of experience will tell you that greater facilities for trade are 
extended to Europeans in even the "closed" ports of China 
than upon the coasts of Persia, and the prospects of the freedom 
of trade upon a Persian railroad would be but a bad one, it may 
be feared. 

The return of trade to the Gulf route will revive the glory of 
many fallen cities of the Middle Ages. Ormuz and Antioch, 
Cyprus and Rhodes, have a second history before them ; Crete, 
Brindisi, and Venice will each obtain a renewal of their ancient 



CHAP. XVI.] OVERLAND ROUTES. 527 

fame. Alexander of Macedon was the first man who took a 
scientific view of tlie importance of the Gulf route ; but we have 
hitherto drawn but little profit from the lesson contained in his 
commission to Nearchus to survey the coast from the Indus to 
the Euphrates. The advantage to be gained from the completion 
of the railway from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf will not 
fall only to the share of India and Great Britain. Holland and 
Belgium are, in proportion to their wealth, at the least as greatly 
interested in the Euphrates route as are we ourselves, and should 
join us in its construction. The Dutch trade with Java would 
be largely benefited, and Dutch ports would become the ship- 
ping-places for Eastern merchandise on its way to England and 
north-east America, while, to the cheap manufactures of Liege, 
India, China, and Central Asia would afford the best of markets. 
If the line were a double one, to the west and north of Aleppo, 
one branch running to Constantinople and the other to the 
Mediterranean at Scanderoon, the whole of Europe would 
benefit by the Persian trade, and, in gaining the Persian trade, 
would gain also the power of protecting Persia against Russia, 
and of thus preventing the dominance of a crushing despotism 
throughout the Eastern world. In a thousand ways, however, 
the advantages of the line to all Europe are so plainly manifest, 
that the only question worth discussing is the nature of the 
difficulties that hinder its completion. 

The difficulties in the way of the Gulf route are political and 
financial, and both have been exaggerated without limit. The 
project for a railway from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf 
has been compared to that for the construction of a railroad 
from the Missouri to the Pacific. In 1858, the American line 
was looked on as a mere speculator's dream, while the Euphrates 
Railway was to be commenced at once ; ten years have passed, 
and the Pacific Railway is a fact, while the Indian line has been 
forgotten. 

It is not that the making of the Euphrates line is a more 
difficult matter than that of crossing the Plains and Rocky 
Mountains. The distance from St. Louis to San Francisco is 
1600 miles, that from Constantinople to Bussorah is but iioo 
miles ; or from Scanderoon to Bussorah only 700 miles. 
From London to the Persian Gulf is not so far as from New 



5 28 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xvi. 

York to San Francisco. The American line had to cross two 
great snowy chains and a waterless tract of considerable width : 
the Indian route crosses no passes so lofty as those of the Rocky 
Mountains or so difficult as those of the Sierra Nevada, and is 
well watered in its whole length. On the American line there 
is little coal, if any, while the Euphrates route would be plenti- 
fully supplied with coal from the neighbourhood of Bagdad. 
When the American line was commenced, the proposed track 
lay across unknown wilds : the Constantinople and Persian 
Gulf route passes through venerable towns, the most ancient of 
all the cities of the world, and the route itself is the oldest 
known highway of trade. The chief of all the advantages pos- 
sessed by the Indian line which is wanting in America is the 
presence of ample labour on all parts of the road. Steamers 
are already running from Bombay and Kurrachee to the Persian 
Gulf ; others on the Tigris, and a portion of the Euphrates ; 
there is a much used road from Bagdad to Aleppo ; and a Turkish 
military road from Aleppo to Constantinople, to which city, a 
direct railroad will soon be opened : and a telegraph line 
belonging to an English company already crosses Asian Turkey 
from end to end. Notwithstanding the facilities, the Euphrates 
Railway is still a project, while the Atlantic and Pacitic Hne will 
be opened in 1870. 

Were the financial difficulties those which the supporters of 
the line have in reaJity to meet, it might be urged that there 
will be a great local traffic between Bussorah, Bagdad, and 
Aleppo, and from all these cities to the sea, and that the Govern- 
ment mail subsidies will be huge, and the Indian trade, even in 
the worst of years, considerable. Were the indifference of 
Belgium, Germany, and Holland such that they should refuse 
to contribute towards the cost of the line, its importance would 
amply warrant a moderate addition to the debt of India. 

The real difficulties that have to be encountered are political 
rather than financial ; the covert opposition of France and 
Egypt is not less powerful for evil than is the open hostility of 
Russia. Happily for India, however, the territories of our ally 
Turkey extend to the Persian Gulf, for it must be remembered 
that for railway purposes Turkish rule, if we so please, is equiva- 
lent to English rule. As it happens, no active measures are 



CHAP, xv^.] OVERLAND ROUTES. 529 

needed to advance our line, but, were it otherwise, such inter- 
vention as might be necessary to secure the safety of the great 
highway for Eastern trade with Europe would be defensible 
were it exerted towards a purely independent Government. 

The pressure to be put upon the Ottoman Porte must be 
direct and governmental. For a private company to conduct 
a great enterprise to a successful conclusion in Eastern countries 
is always difficult ; but when the matter is political in its nature, 
or, if commercial, at least hindered on political grounds, a 
private company is powerless. It is, moreover, the practice of 
Eastern Governments to grant concessions of important works 
which they cannot openly oppose, but which in truth they wish 
to hinder, to companies so formed as to be incapable of pro- 
ceeding with the undertaking. When others apply, the Govern- 
ment answers them that nothing further can be done : " the 
concession is already granted," 

Whatever steps are taken, a bold front is needed. It might 
even be advisable that we should declare that the Euphrates 
Valley Railway through the Turkish territory from Constanti- 
nople and Scanderoon through Aleppo to Bagdad and Bussorah, 
and sufficient military posts to ensure its security in time of 
war, are necessary to our tenure of India, and that we should 
call upon Turkey to grant us permission to commence our work, 
on pain of the withdrawal of our protection. 

Our general principle of non-interference is always liable to 
be set aside on proof of the existence of a higher necessity for 
intervention than for adherence to our golden rule, and it may 
be contended that sufficient proof has been shown in the present 
instance. Whether public action is to be taken, or the matter 
to be left to private enterprise, it is hard to resist the conclusion 
that the Direct Route to India is one of the most pressing of 
the questions of the day. 

When, in company with my fellow-passengers from Moultan, 
I left Kurrachee for Bombay, we had on board the then Com- 
missioner of Scinde, who was on his way to take his seat as a 
member of Council at Bombay. A number of the leading men 
of Scinde came on board to bid farewell to him before he sailed, 
and among them the royal brothers who, but for our annexation 
of the country, would be the reigning Ameers at this moment. 

2 M 



530 GBEATER BRITAIN. [chap. xvi. 

Nothing that I had seen in India, even at Umritsur, surpassed 
in ghttering pomp the caps and baldricks of these Scindee chief- 
tains ; neither could anything be stranger than their dress. One 
had on a silk coat of pale green shot with yellow, satin trousers, 
and velvet slippers with curled peaks ; another wore a jacket of 
dark amber with flowers in white lace, A third was clothed in 
a cloth of crimson striped with amber ; and the Ameer himself 
was wearing a tunic of scarlet silk and gold, and a scarf of 
purple gauze. All wore the strange-shaped Scindian hat ; all 
had jewelled dirks, with curiously-wrought scabbards to hold 
their swords, and gorgeously-embroidered baldricks to support 
them. The sight, however, of no number of sapphires, tur- 
quoises, and gold clothes could have reconciled me to a longer 
detention in Kurrachee ; so I rejoiced when our bespangled 
friends disappeared over the ship's side to the sound of the 
Lascars' anchor-tripping chorus, and left the deck to the 
'' Proconsul " and ourselves. 



53^ 



CHAPTER XVII. 

Bombay. 

Crossing the mouths of the Gulfs of Cutch and Cambay, we 
reached Bombay in Httle more than two days from Kurrachee ; 
but as we rounded Colaba Point and entered the harbour, the 
setting sun was hghting up the distant ranges of the Western 
Ghauts, and by the time we liad dropped anchor it was dark, so 
I slept on board. 

I woke to find the day breaking over the peaked mountains 
of the Deccan, and reveahng the wooded summits of the islands, 
while a hght land-breeze rippled the surface of the water, and 
the bay was alive with the bright lateen sails of the native 
cotton-boats. The many woods coming down in rich green 
masses into the sea itself, lent a singular softness to the view, 
and the harbour echoed with the capstan songs of all nations, 
from the American to the Beloochee, from the Swedish to the 
Greek. 

The vegetation that surrounds the harbour, though the even 
mass of green is broken here and there by the crimson cones 
of the " gold mohur" trees, resembles that of Ceylon, and the 
scene is rather tropical than Indian, but there is nothing 
tropical and little that is Eastern in the bustle of the bay. The 
lines of huge steamers, and forests of masts backed by the still 
more crowded field of roofs and towers, impress you with a 
sense of wealth and worldliness from which you gladly seek 
relief by turning towards the misty beauty of the mountain 
islands and the Western Ghauts. Were the harbour smaller, it 
would be lovely; as it is, the distances are over great. 

Notwithstanding its vast trade, Bombay for purposes of 
defence is singularly weak. The absence of batteries from the 

2 ]\I 2 



532 GBEATER BRITAIN. [chap. xvii. 

entrance to so great a trading port, strikes eyes that have seen 
San Francisco and New York, and the marks on Bombay 
Castle of the cannon-balls of the Mogul should be a warning to 
the Bombay merchants to fortify their port against attacks by 
sea, but act as a reminder to the traveller that, from a military 
point of view, Kurrachee is a better harbour than Bombay, the 
approach to which can easily be cut off, and its people starved. 
One advantage, hoAvever, of the erection of batteries at the 
harbour's mouth would be, that the inner fort might be pulled 
down, unless it were thought advisable to retain it for the pro- 
tection of the Europeans against riots, and that in any case the 
broad space of cleared ground which now cuts the town in half 
might be partly built on. 

The present remarkable prosperity of Bombay is the result 
of the late increase in the cotton trade, to the sudden decline 
of which, in 1865 and 1866, has also been attributed the ruin 
that fell upon the city in the last-named year. The panic, from 
which Bombay has now so far recovered that it can no longer 
be said that she has '•' not one merchant solvent," was chiefly a 
reaction from a speculation-madness, in which the shares in a 
land reclamation company which never commenced its opera- 
tions once touched a thousand per cent., but was intensified by 
the passage of the English panic-wave of 1866 across India and 
round the world. 

Not even in Mississippi is cotton more completely king than 
in Bombay. Cotton has collected the hundred steamers and 
the thousands of native boats that are anchored between the 
Apollo Bunder and Mazagon ; cotton has built the great offices 
and stores of seven and eight stories high ; cotton has furnished 
the villas on Malabar Hill, that resemble the New Yorkers' 
cottages on Staten Island. 

The export of cotton from India rose from five millions 
worth in 1859 to thirty-eight millions worth in 1864, and the 
total exports of Bombay increased in the same proportion, 
while the population o fthe city rose from 400,000 to 1,000,000. 
We are accustomed to look at the East as standing still, but 
Chicago itself never took a grander leap than did Bombay be- 
tween i860 and 1864. The rebellion in America gave the 
impetus, but was not the sole cause of this prosperity ; and the 



CHAP. XVII.] BOMBAY. 533 

Indian cotton-trade, though checked by the peace, is not 
destroyed. Cotton and jute are not the only Indian raw pro- 
ducts the export of which has increased suddenly of late. The 
export of wool increased twenty-fold, of tobacco, three-fold, ot 
coffee, seven-fold in the last six years ; and the export of Indian 
tea increased in five years from nothing to three or four hundred 
thousand pounds. The old Indian exports, those which we asso- 
ciate with the term " Eastern trade," are standing still, while the 
raw produce trade is thus increasing : — spices, elephants' teeth, 
pearls, jewels, bandannas, shellac, dates, and gum, are all de- 
creasing, although the total exports of the country have trebled 
in five years. 

India needs but railroads to enable her to compete success- 
fully with America in the growth of cotton, but the development 
of the one raw product will open out her hitherto unknown 
resources. 

While staying at one of the great merchant-houses in the 
Fort, I was able to see that the commerce of Bombay has not 
grown up of itself With some experience among hard workers 
in the English towns, I was, nevertheless, astonished at the 
work got through by senior clerks and junior partners at Bom- 
bay. Although at first led away by the idea that men who 
wear white linen suits all day, and smoke in rocking-chairs upon 
the balcony for an hour after breakfast, cannot be said to do 
much work, I soon found that men in merchants' houses at 
Bombay work harder than they would be likely to do at home. 
Their day begins at 6 a.m., and, as a rule, they work from then till 
dinner at 8 or 9 p.m., taking an hour for breakfast, and two for 
tifiin. My stay at Bombay was during the hottest fortnight in 
the year, and twelve hours' work in the day, with the thermo- 
meter never under 90° all the night, is an exhausting life. 
Englishmen could not long survive the work, but the Bombay 
merchants are all Scotch. In British settlements, from Canada 
to Ceylon, from Dunedin to Bombay, for every Englishman 
that you meet who has worked himself up to wealth from small 
beginnings without external aid, you find ten Scotchmen. It 
is strange, indeed, that Scotland has not become the popular 
name for the United Kingdom. 

Bombay life is not without its compensations. It is not 



534 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xvir. 

always May or June, and from November to March the dimate 
is all but perfect. Even in the hottest weather, the Byculla 
Club is cool, and Mahabaleshwar is close at hand, for short 
excursions, whenever the time is found ; while the Bombay 
mango is a fruit which may bear comparison with the peaches 
of Salt Lake City, or the melons of San Francisco. The 
Bombay merchants have not time, indeed, to enjoy the beauties 
of their city, any more than Londoners have to visit West- 
minster Abbey or explore the Tower ; and as for " tropical 
indolence," or "Anglo-Indian luxury," the bull-dogs are the 
only members of the English community in India who can 
discover anything but half-concealed hardships in the life. 
Each dog has his servant to attend to all his wants, and, know- 
ing this, the cunning brute always makes the boy carry him up 
the long flights of stairs that lead to the private rooms over the 
merchants' houses in the Fort. 

Bombay bazaar is the gayest of gay scenes. Besides the 
ordinary crowd of any "native town," there are solemn Jains, 
copper-coloured Jews, white-coated Portuguese, Persians, Arabs, 
Catholic priests, bespangled nautch girls, and grinning Seedees. 
The Parsees are strongest of all the merchant peoples of Bom- 
bay in numbers, in intelligence, and in wealth. Among the 
shopkeepers of their race, there is an over-prominence of trade 
shrewdness in the expression of the face, and in the shape even 
of the head. The Louvre bust of Richelieu, in which we have 
the ideal of a wheedler, is a common type in the Parsee shops 
of the Bombay bazaar. The Parsee people, however, whatever 
their looks, are not only in complete possession of Bombay, 
but are the dark-skinned race to which we shall have to entrust 
the largest share in the regeneration of the East. Trading as 
they do in every city between Galle and Astrakan, but every- 
where attached to the English rule, they bear to us the relative 
position that the Greeks occupy towards Russia. 

Both in religion and in education, the Parsees are, as a com- 
munity, far in advance of the Indian Mohamedans, and of the 
Hindoos. Their creed has become a pure deism, in which 
God's works are worshipped as the manifestations or visible 
representatives of God on earth — fire, the sun, and the sea taking 
the first places; although in the climate of Bombay, prayers 



CHAP. XVII.] BOMBAY. 535 

to the sun must be made up of more supplications than thanks- 
givings. The Parsee men are soundly taught, and there is not 
a pauper in the whole tribe. In the education and elevation 
of women, no Eastern race has as yet done much, but the 
Parsees have done the most and have paved the way for further 
progress. 

In the . matter of the seclusion of women, the Parsee move- 
ment has had some effect upon others than Parsees, and the 
Hindoos of Bombay city stand far before even those of Calcutta 
in the earnestness and success of their endeavours to promote 
the moral elevation of women. Nothing can be done towards 
the regeneration of India so long as the women of all classes 
remain in their present degradation ; and although many native 
gentlemen in Bombay already recognise the fact, and act upon 
it, progress is slow, since there is no basis upon which to begin. 
The Hindoos will not send their wives to schools where there 
are European lady teachers, for fear of proselytism taking place ; 
and native women teachers are not yet to be found ; hence all 
teaching must needs be left to men. Nothing, moreover, can 
be done with female children in Western India, where girls are 
married at from five to twelve years old, although it is true that 
the report of the Alexandra school contains a few entries such 
as " Herabai, wife of Esq.; aged 13, attendance irregular." 

I had not been two days in Bombay when a placard caught 
my eye, announcing a performance at the theatre of " Romeo 
and Juliet, in the Maratta tongue;" but the play had no Friar 
Lawrence, no apothecary, and no nurse ; it was nothing but a 
simple Maratta love tale, followed by some religious tableaux. 
In the first piece an Englishman was introduced, and repre- 
sented as kicking every native that crossed his path with the 
exclamation of " Damned fool :" at each repetition of which the 
whole house laughed. It is to be feared that this portion of 
the play was "founded upon fact." On my way home through 
the native town at night, I came on a marriage procession 
better than any that I had seen. A band of fifers were scream- 
ing the most piercing of notes in front of an illuminated house, 
at which the horsemen and carriages were just arriving, both 
men and women clothed in jewelled robes, and silks of a hun- 
dred colours, that flashed and glittered in the blaze of the red 



536 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xvii. 

torches. The procession, Hke the greater number of the most 
gorgeous ceremonials of Bombay, was conducted by Parsees to 
celebrate the marriage of one of their own people ; but it is a 
curious fact that night-marriages were forced upon the Parsees 
by the Hindoos, and one of the conditions upon which the 
Parsees were received into India was, that their marriage pro- 
cessions should take place at night. 

The Caves of Elephanta have been many times described. 
The grandest sight of India, after the Taj, is the three-faced 
bust of the Hindoo Trinity, or God in his threefold character 
of Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer. No Grecian sculpture 
that I have seen so well conveys the idea of Godhead. The 
Greeks could idealize man, the Italians can paint the saint, but 
the builders of Elephanta had the power of executing the 
highest ideal of a pagan god. The repose which distinguishes 
the heads of the Creator and Preserver is not the meditation 
of the saint, but the calm of unbounded power ; and the 
Destroyer's head portends not destruction, so much as annihi- 
lation, to the world. The central head is, in its mysterious 
solemnity, that which the Sphinx should be, and is not; but one 
attribute alone is common to the expression of all three faces, 
— the presence of the Inscrutable. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

The Mohurrum. 

Although Poonah is the ancient Maratta capital, and a 
thoroughly Hindoo city, it is famed throughout India for the 
splendour with which its people celebrate the Mohamedan 
Mohurrum, so I timed my visit in such a way as to reach the 
town upon tlie day of the " taboot procession." 

The ascent from the Konkan, or flat country of Bombay, by 
the Western Ghauts to the table-land of the Deccan, known as 
the Bhore Ghaut incline, in which the railway rises from the 
plain 2 000 feet into the Deccan, by a series of steps sixteen 
miles in length, is far more striking as an engineering work 
than the passage of the Alleghanies on tlie Baltimore and Ohio 
track, and as much inferior to the Sierra Nevada railway works. 
The views from the carriage windows are singularly like those 
in the Kaduganava Pass between Columbo and Kandy ; in fact, 
the Western Ghauts are of the same character as tlie mountains 
of Ceylon, the hills being almost invariably either fiat-topped or 
else rent by volcanic action into great pinnacles and needle peaks. 

The rainy season had not commenced, and the vegetation 
that gives the Ghauts their charm was wanting, although the 
"mango showers" were beginning, and spiders and other 
insects, unseen during the hot weather, were creeping into the 
houses to seek shelter from the rains. One of the early travel- 
lers to the Deccan told the good folks at home that after the 
rains the spiders' webs were so thickly laced across the jungle, 
that the natives of the country were in the habit of hiring 
elephants to walk before them and force a passage 1 At the 
time of my visit, neitlier webs nor jungle were to be seen, and 
the spiders were very hantiless-looking fellows. One effect of 



538 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.xviii. 

the approaching monsoon was visible from the summit of the 
Ghaut, for the bases of the mountains were hid by the low 
clouds that foretell the coming rains. The inclines are held to 
be unsafe during the monsoon, but they are not so bad as the 
Kotree and Kurrachee line, which runs only " weather permit- 
ting," and is rendered useless by two hours' rain — a fall which, 
luckily for the shareholders, occurs only about once in every 
seven years. On the Bhore Ghaut, on the contrary, 220 inches 
in four months is not unusual, and " the rains " here take the 
place of the avalanche of colder ranges, and carry away bridges, 
lines, and trains themselves; but in the dry season there is a 
want of the visible presence of difficulties overcome, which de- 
tracts from the interest of the line. 

At day-break at Poonah, the tomtom-ing, which had lasted 
without intermission through the ten days' fast, came to a 
sudden end, and the police and European magistrates began 
to marshal the procession of the taboots, or shrines, in the 
bazaar. 

A proclamation in English and Maratta was posted on the 
walls, announcing the order of the procession and the rules to be 
enforced. The orders were, that the procession to the river 
was to commence at seven a.m. and to end at eleven a.m., and 
that tomtom-ing, except during those hours, would not be 
allowed. The taboots of the light cavalry, of three regiments of 
native infantry, and of the followers of three English regiments 
of the line, were, however, to start at six o'clock : the order of 
precedence among the cantonment or regimental taboots was 
carefully laid down, and the carrying of arms forbidden. 

When I reached the bazaar, I found the native police were 
working in vain in trying to force into line a vast throng of 
bannermen, drummers, and saints, who surrounded the various 
taboots or models of the house of AH and Fatima where their 
sons Hassan and Hoosein were born. Some of the shrines 
were of the size and make of the dolls' houses of our English chil- 
dren, others in their height and gorgeousness resembled the most 
successful of our burlesques upon Guy Fawkes : some were borne 
on litters by four men ; others mounted on light carts and drawn 
by bullocks, while the gigantic taboot of the Third Cavalry 
required six buffaloes for its transport to the river. Many 



CHAP. XVIII.] THE MOH URE UM. 539 

privates of our native infantry regiments had joined the proces- 
sion in uniform, and it was as strange to me to see privates in 
our service engaged in howhng round a sort of Maypole, and 
accompanying their yells with the tomtom, as it must have been 
to the English in Lucknow in 1857 to hear the bands of the 
rebel regiments playing " Cheer, boys, cheer." 

Some of the troops in Poonah were kept within their lines 
all day, to be ready to suppress disturbances caused by the 
Moslem fanatics, who, excited by the Mohurrum, often run 
a-muck among their Hindoo neighbours. In old times, quarrels 
between the Sonnites and Shiites, or orthodox and dissenting 
Mussulmen, used to be added to those between Mohamedans 
and Hindoos at the season of the Mohurrum, but except upon 
the Afghan border these feuds have all but died out now. 

At the head of the procession marched a row of pipers, 
producing sounds of which no Highland regiment would have 
felt ashamed, followed by long-bearded, turban-wearing 
Marattas, on foot and horseback, surrounding an immense 
pagoda-shaped taboot placed on a cart, and drawn by bullocks ; 
boys swinging incense walked before and followed, and I 
remarked a gigantic cross — a loan, no doubt, from the Jesuit 
College for this Mohamedan festivity. After each taboot, there 
came a band of Hindoo " tigers " — men painted in thorough 
imitation of the jungle king, and wearing tiger ears and tails. 
Sometimes, instead of tigers, we had men painted in the colours 
worn by " sprites " in an English pantomime, and all — sprites 
and tigers — danced in the fashion of the mediaeval mummers. 
Behind the tigers and buffoons there followed women, walk- 
ing in their richest dress. The nautch girls of Poonah are 
reputed the best in all the East, but the monotonous Bombay 
nautch is not to be compared with the Cashmere nautch of 
Lahore. 

Some taboots were guarded on either side by sheiks on 
horseback, wearing turbans of the honourable green which de- 
notes direct descent from the Prophet, though the genealogy is 
sometimes doubtful, as in the case of the Angel Gabriel, who, 
according to Mohamedan writers, wears a green turban, as 
being an " honorary " descendant of Mohamed. 

Thousands of men and women thronged the road down which 



540 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xviii. 

the taboots were forced to pass, or sat in the shade of the peepul 
trees until the taboot of their family or street came up, and then 
followed it, dancing and tomtom-beating like the rest. 

Poonah is famed for the grace of its women and the elegance 
of their gait. In the hot weather, the saree is the sole garment 
of the Hindoo women, and lends grace to the form without 
concealing the outlines of the trunk or the comely shapes of the 
well-turned limbs. The saree is eight yards long, but of such 
soft thin texture that it makes no show upon the person. It is 
a singular testimony to the strength of Hindoo habits, that at 
this Mohamedan festival the Mohamedan women should all be 
wearing the long seamless saree of the conquered Hindoos. 

In the Mohurrum procession at Poonah there was nothing 
distinctively Mohamedan. Hindoos joined in the festivities, 
and " Portuguese," or descendants of the slaves, half-castes, and 
native Christians who at the time of the Portuguese occupation 
of Surat assumed high-sounding names and titles, and now form 
a large proportion of the inhabitants of towns in the Bombay 
Presidency. The temptation of a ten days' holiday is too great 
to be resisted by the prejudices of even the Christians or 
Hindoos. 

The procession ended at the Ghauts on the river-side, where 
the taboots, one after the other, made their exit from ten days 
of glory into unfathomable slush ; and such was the number of 
the " camp taboots," as those of the native soldiers in our service 
are styled, and the " bazaar taboots," or city contributions, that 
the immersion ceremonies were not completed when the illumi- 
nation and fireworks began. 

After dark, the bazaar was lit with coloured fires, and with 
the ghostly paper-lanterns that give no light ; and the noise of 
tomtoms and fire-crackers recommenced in spite of proclama- 
tions and police-rules. Were there in Indian streets anything 
to burn, the Mohurrum would cause as many fires in Hindostan 
as Independence-day in the United States; but, although houses 
are burnt out daily in the bazaars, they are never burnt down, 
for nothing but water can damage mud. We could have played 
our way into Lucknow in 1857 with pumps and hoses at least 
.as fast as we contrived to batter a road into it with shot and 
shell. 



CHAP, xviii.] THE MOHURRUM. 541 

During the day I had been amused with the sayings of some 
British recruits, who were watching the immersion ceremonies, 
but in the evening one of them was in the bazaar, uproariously 
drunk, kicking every native against whom we stumbled, and 
shouting to an officer of another regiment, who did not like to 
interfere : " I'm a private soldier, I know, but I'm a gentleman ; 
I know what the hatmosphere is, I do ; and I knows a cloud 
when I sees it, damned if I don't." On the other hand, in 
some fifty thousand natives holiday-making that day, many of 
them Christians and low-caste men, with no prejudice against 
drink, a drunken man was not to be seen. 

It is impossible to over-estimate the harm done to the 
English name in India by the conduct of drunken soldiers and 
" European loafers." The latter class consists chiefly of dis- 
charged railway guards and runaway sailors from Calcutta, — 
men who, travelling across India and living at free quarters on 
the trembling natives, become ruffianly beyond description from 
the effect upon their originally brutal natures of the possession 
of unusual power. 

The popularity of Mohamedan festivals such as that of the 
Mohurrum has been one of the many causes which have led us 
to believe that the Mohamedans form a considerable proportion 
of the population of Hindostan ; but the census in the North- 
West Provinces revealed the fact that they had there been 
popularly set down as three times as numerous as they are, and 
it is probable that the same is the case throughout all India. 
Not only are the Indian Mohamedans few, but their Mohame- 
danism sits lightly on them : they are Hindoos in caste distinc- 
tions, in ceremonies, in daily life, and all but Hindoos in their 
actual worship. On the other hand, this Mohurrum showed me 
that the Hindoos do not scruple to attend the commemoration 
of Hassan and Hoosein. At Benares there is a temple w^hich 
is used .in common by Mohamedans and Hindoos, and through- 
out India, among the low-caste people, there is now little dis- 
tinction between the religions. The descendants of the 
Mohamedan conquerors, who form the leading families in 
several native States, and also in Oude itself, are among the 
most dangerous of our Indian subjects, but they appear to have 
but little hold upon the humble classes of their fellow-wor- 



542 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap, xviii. 

shippers, and their attempts to stir up their people to active 
measures against the EngHsh have always failed. We, however, 
have hitherto somewhat ignored the claims upon our considera- 
tion of the Indian Mohamedans and still more numerous hill- 
tribes, and permitted our Governments to act as though the 
Hindoos and the Sikhs were the only inhabitants of Hin- 
dostan. 



543 



CHAPTER XIX. 

English Learning. 

The English traveller who crosses India from Calcutta to 
Bombay is struck with the uncivilized condition of the land. He 
has heard in England of palaces and temples, of art treasures 
and of native poetry, of the grace of the Hindoo maidens, of 
Cashmere shawls, of the Taj, of the Pearl Mosque, of a civiliza- 
tion as perfect as the European, and as old as the Chinese. 
When he lands and surveys the people, he finds them naked 
barbarians, plunged in the densest ignorance and superstition, 
and safe only from extermination because the European cannot 
dwell permanently in the climate of their land. The stories we 
are told at home are in no sense false : — the Hindoos, of all 
classes, are graceful in their carriage ; their tombs and mosques 
are of extraordinary beauty, their art patterns the despair of our 
best craftsman ; the native poetry is at least equal to our own, 
and the Taj the noblest building in the world. Every word is 
true, but the whole forms but a singularly small portion of the 
truth. The religious legends, the art patterns, the perfect 
manner and the graceful eye and taste seem to have descended 
to the Hindoos of to-day from a generation whose general 
civilization they have forgotten. The poetry is confined to a 
few members of a high-caste race, and is mainly an importation 
from abroad ; the architecture is that of the Moslem conquerors. 
Shah Jehan, a Mohamedan emperor and a foreigner, built the 
Taj ; Akbar the Great, another Turk, was the designer of the 
Pearl Mosque ; and the Hindoos can no more be credited with 
the architecture of their early conquerors than they can with 
the railways and bridges of their English rulers, or with the 
waterworks of Bombay city. The Sikhs are chiefly foreigners ; 



544 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xix. 

but of the purely native races, the Rajpoots are only fine bar- 
barians, the Bengalees mere savages, and the tribes of Central 
India but little better than the Australian aborigines or the 
brutes. Throughout India there are remains of an early civili- 
zation, but it has vanished as completely as it has in Africa ; 
and the Cave-temples stand as far from the daily life of Hindo- 
stan as the Pyramids do from that of Egypt. 

It is to be feared that the decline has been extremely rapid 
since the day when we arrived in India. Just as it is almost 
impossible, by any exertion of the mind, to realize in Mexico 
the fact that the present degraded Aztecs are the same people 
whom the Spaniards found, only some three hundred years ago, 
dwelling in splendid palaces, and worshipping their unknown 
gods in golden temples through the medium of a sacred tongue, 
so now it is difficult to believe that the pauperized inhabitants 
of Orissa and the miserable peasantry of Oude are the sons of 
the chivalrous warriors who fought in the last century against 
Clive. 

The truth is, that in surveying Oriental empires from a dis- 
tance, we are dazzled by the splendour of the kings and priests ; 
drawing near, we find an oppressed and miserable slave class, 
from whose hard earnings the wealth of the great is wrung; 
called on to govern the country, we extinguish the kings and 
priests in the fashion in which Captain Hodson, in 1857, shot 
the last sons of the Imperial family of India in a dry ditch, 
while we were transporting the last Mogul, along with our 
native thieves, in a convict ship to British Burmah. There 
remains the slave class, and little else. We may select a few 
of these to be our policemen and torturers-in-chief, we may 
pick another handful to wear red coats, and be our guards and 
the executioners of their countrymen ; we may teach a few to 
chatter some words of English, and then, calling them great 
scoundrels, may set them in our railway stations and our offices ; 
but virtually, in annexing any Eastern country, we destroy the 
ruling class, and reduce the government to a mere imperiahsm, 
where one man rules and the rest are slaves. No parallel can 
be drawn in Europe or North America to that state of things 
which exists wherever we carry our arms in the East : were 
the President and Congress in America, and all the wealthy 



CHAP. XIX.] ENGLISH LEARNING, 545 

merchants of the great towns, to be destroyed to-morrow, the 
next day would see the government proceeding quietly in Jthe 
hands of another set every bit as intelligent, as wise, and good. 
In a lesser degree, the same would be the case in England or in 
France. The best example that could be given nearer home 
of that which occurs continually in the East would be one 
which should suppose that the Emperor and no'bility in Russia 
were suddenly destroyed, and the country left in the hands of 
the British ambassador and the late serfs. Even this example 
would fail to convey a notion of the extent of the revolution 
which takes place on the conquest by Britain of an Eastern 
country ; for in the East the nobles are better taught and the 
people more ignorant than they are in Russia, and the change 
causes a more complete destruction of poetry, of literature, and 
of art. 

It being admitted, then, that we are in the position of having, 
in Hindostan, a numerous and ignorant, but democratic people 
to govern from without, there comes the question of what 
should be the general character of our government. The im- 
mediate questions of the day may be left to our subordinates in 
India ; but the direction and the tendencies of legislation are 
matters for us at home. There can be nothing more ridiculous 
than the position of those of our civilians in India who, while 
they treat the natives with profound contempt, are continually 
crying out against government from at home, on the ground set 
forth in the shibboleth of " India for the Indians." If India is 
to be governed by the British race at all, it must be governed 
from Great Britain. The general conditions of our rule must 
be dictated at London by the English people, and nothing but 
the execution of our decrees, the collection of evidence, and 
the framing of mere rules, left to our subordinates in the East. 
First among the reforms that must be introduced from 
London is the general instruction in the English language of 
the native population. Except upon a theory that will fairly 
admit of the forcing upon a not unwilling people of this first of 
all great means of civilization, our presence in India is wholly 
indefensible. Unless also that be done, our presence in India 
or that of some nation stronger than us and not more scrupulous, 
must endure for ever, for it is plainly impossible that a native 

2 N 



546 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xix. 

government capable of holding its own against Russia and 
America can otherwise be built up in Hindostan. Upon the 
contrary supposition, — namely, that we do not intend at any 
time to quit our hold on India. — the instruction of the people 
in our language becomes still more important. Upon the 
second theory, we must teach them English, the language of the 
British Govern'bient ; upon the first, English, the language of 
the world. Upon either theory we must teach them English. 
Nothing can better show the trivial character of the rnuch- 
talked-of reforms introduced into India in the last few years, 
since our Queen has assumed the imperial throne of Hindostan, 
than the fact that no progress whatever has been made in a 
matter of far more grave importance than are any number of 
miles of railway, canal, or Grand Trunk roads. Our civilians 
in India tell us that, if you teach the natives English, you 
expose them to the attacks of Christian missionaries, and us to 
revolt — an exposure which speaks not too highly of the Govern- 
ment which is forced to make it. Our military officers, naturally 
hating the country to which they now are exiled, instead of - 
being sent as formerly of their own free will, tell you that every 
native who can speak English is a scoundrel, a liar, and a thief, 
which is, perhaps, if we except the Parsees, not far from true at 
present, when teaching is given only to a few lads, who thus 
acquire a monopoly of the offices in which money passes 
through native hands. Their opinion has no bearing whatever 
upon a general instruction of the people, under which we should 
evidently be able to pick our men, as we now pick them for 
all employments in which a knowledge of English is not 
required. 

A mere handful of Spaniards succeeded in naturalizing their 
language in a country twice as large as Europe : in the whole 
of South America, the Central States, and Mexico. Not only 
there, but in the United States, the Utes and Comanches, wild 
as they are, speak Spanish, while their own language is forgotten. 
In the west of Mexico there is no trace of pure Spanish blood, 
there is even comparatively little mixture — yet Spanish, and 
that of the best, is spoken, to the exclusion of every other 
language, in Manzanillo and Acapulco. This phenomenon is 
not confined to the Western world. In Bombay Presidency, 



CHAP. XIX.] ENGLISH LEARNING. 547 

five millions of so-called Portuguese — who, however, for the 
most part are pure Hindoos — speak a Latin tongue, and 
worship at the temples of the Christian God. French makes 
progi'ess in Saigon, Dutch in Java. In Canada, we find the 
Huron Indians French in language and religion. English alone, 
. it would seem, cannot be pressed upon any of the dark-skinned 
tribes. In New Zealand, the Maories know no English ; in 
Natal, the Zulus ; in India, the Hindoos. The Dutch, finally 
expelled from South Africa in 1815 and from Ceylon in 1802, 
have yet more hold by their tongue upon the natives of those 
lands than have the English — masters of them since the Dutch 
expulsion. 

To the early abolition or total non-existence of slavery in the 
British colonies, we may, perhaps, trace our unfortunate failure 
to spread our mother tongue. Dutch, Portuguese, Spaniards, 
all practised a slavery of the widest kind ; all had about them 
not native servants, frequently changing from the old master to 
the new, and passing unheeded to whatever service money 
could tempt them to engage in, but domestic slaves, bred up in 
the family, and destined, probably, to die within the house 
where they were reared, to whom the language of the master 
was taught, because your Spanish grandee, with power of life 
and death over his family slaves, was not the man to condescend 
to learn his servants' tongue in order that his commands should 
be more readily understood. Another reason may have caused 
the Portuguese and other dominant races of the later middle 
ages to have insisted that their slaves should learn the language 
of the master and the government ; namely, that in learning 
the new, the servile famihes would speedily forget the older 
tongue, and thus become as incapable of mixing in the con- 
spiracies and insurrections of their brother natives as Pyrenean 
shepherd-dogs of consorting with their progenitors, the w^olves. 
Whatever their reasons, however, the Spaniards succeeded 
where we have failed. 

The greatest of our difficulties are the financial. No cheap 
system is workable by us, and our dear system we have not the 
means to work. The success of our rule immediately depends 
upon the purity and good feeling of the rulers ; yet there are 
villages in British India where the people have never seen a 

2 N 2 



548 GREATER BRITAIN. , [chap. xix. 

white man, and off the main roads, and outside the district 
towns, the sight of a European official is extremely rare. To 
the inhabitants of the greater portion of rural India, the 
governor who symbolizes British rule is a cruel and corrupt 
Hindoo policeman : himself not improbably a Bengal mutineer 
in 1857, or drawn from the classes whom our most ignorant. 
Sepoys themselves despised. It is not easy to see how this 
vital defect can be amended, except by the slow process of 
raising up a native population that we can trust and put in 
office, and this is impossible unless we encourage and reward 
the study of the English tongue. The most needed of all social 
reforms in India — an improvement in the present thoroughly 
servile condition of the native women — could itself in no way be 
more easily brought about than by the familiarization of the 
Hindoos with English literature ; and that greatest of all the 
curses of India, false-swearing in the courts, would undoubtedly 
be both directly and indirectly checked by the introduction of 
our language. The spread of the English tongue need be no 
check to that of the ancient classical languages of the East : 
the two studies would go hand in hand. It is already a disgrace 
to us that while we spend annually in India a large sum upon 
our chaplains and church schools, we toss only one hundredth 
part of the sum — a paltry few thousands of rupees — to the 
native colleges, where the most venerable of languages — San- 
scrit, Arabic, and Persian — are taught by the men who alone 
can thoroughly understand them. At' the moment when Eng- 
land, Germany, and America are struggling for the palm in the 
teaching of Oriental literature — when Oxford, Edinburgh, and 
London are contending with each other, and with Berlin, Yale, 
and Harvard, in translating and explaining Eastern books — our 
Government in India is refusing the customary help to the 
publication of Sanscrit works, and starving the teachers of the 
language.* 

So long as the natives remain ignorant of the English tongue, 
they remain ignorant of all the civilization of our time — igno- 
rant alike of political and physical science, of philosophy and 
true learning. It is needless to say that, if French or German 

* Since the publication of "Greater Britain," some progress has been 
made. 



criAi". XIX.] 



ENGLISH LEARNING. 



SAl 



were taught them instead of EngUsh, they would be as well off 
in this respect ; but English, as the tongue of the ruling race, 
has the vast advantage that its acquisition by the Hindoos will 
soon place the government of India in native hands, and thus, 
gradually relieving us of an almost intolerable burthen, will 
civilize and set free the people of Hindostan. 



GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. xx. 



CHAPTER XX. 

India. 

"All general observations upon India are necessarily absurd,'' 
said to me at Simla a distinguished officer of the Viceroy's 
government ; but, although this is true enough of theories that 
bear upon the customs, social or religious, of the forty or fifty 
peoples which make up what in England we style the " Hindoo 
race," it has no bearing on the consideration of the policy which 
should guide our actual administration of the Empire. 

England in the East is not the England that we knov/. 
Flousy Britannia, with her anchor and ship, becomes a myste- 
rious Oriental despotism, ruling a sixth of the human race, 
nominally for the natives' own good, and certainly for no one 
else's, by laws and in a manner opposed to every tradition and 
every prejudice of the whole of the various tribes of which this 
vast population is composed — scheming, annexing, out-manoeu- 
A^ering Russia, and sometimes, it is to be feared, out-lying Persia 
herself 

In our island home, we plume ourselves upon our hatred of 
political extraditions : we would scorn to ask the surrender of a 
political criminal of our own, we would die in the last ditch 
sooner than surrender those of another crown. What a contrast 
we find to this when we look at our conduct in the East ! During 
the mutiny of 1857, some of our rebel subjects escaped into 
the Portuguese territory at Goa. We demanded their extradi- 
tion, which the Portuguese refused. We insisted. The offer 
we finally accepted was, that they should be ti'ansported to the 
Portuguese settlement at Timor, we supplying transports. An 
Indian transport conveying these men to their island grave, but 
carrying the British flag, touched at Batavia in 1858, to the 



CHAP. XX.] INDIA. 551 

astonishment of the honest Dutchmen, who knew England as a 
defender of national liberty in Europe. 

Although despotic, our government of India is not bad"; 
indeed, the hardest thing that can be said of it is that it is too 
good. We do our duty by the natives manfully, but they care 
little about that, and we are continually hurting their prejudices 
and offending them in small things, to which they attach more 
importance than they do to great. To conciliate the Hindoos, 
we should spend 10,000/. a year in support of native literature 
to please the learned, and 10,000/. on fireworks to delight the 
wealthy and the low-caste people. Instead of this, we worry 
them with municipal institutions and benevolent inventions that 
they cannot and will not understand. The attempt to introduce 
trial by jury into certain parts of India was laudable, but it has 
ended in one of those failures which discredit the Government 
in the eyes of its own subordinates. If there is a European 
foreman of jury, the natives salaam to him, and ask : " What 
does the sahib say ? " If not, they look across the court to the 
native barristers, who hold up fingers, each of which means 
100 rs., and thus bid against each other for the verdict; for, 
while natives as a rule are honest in their personal or individual 
dealings, yet in places of trust — railway clerkships, secretary- 
ships of departments, and so on — they are almost invariably 
willing to take bribes. 

Throughout India, such trials as are not before a jury are 
conducted with the aid of native assessors as members of the 
court. This works almost as badly as the jury does, the judge 
giving his decision without any reference to the opinion of the 
assessors. The story nms that the only use of assessors is, that 
in an appeal — where the judge and assessors had agreed — the 
advocate can say that the judge "has abdicated his functions, 
and yielded to the absurd opinion of a couple of ignorant and 
dishonest natives," — or, if the judge had gone against his client 
in spite of the assessors being inclined the other way, that the 
judge " has decided in the teeth of all experienced and impartial 
native opinion, as declared by the voices of two honest and 
intelligent assessors." 

Our introduction of juries is not an isolated instance of our 
somewhat blind love for " progress." If in the already-pub- 



552 ' GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xx. 

lished portions of the civil code — for instance, the parts which 
relate to succession, testamentary and intestate — you read in 
the illustrations York for Delhi, and Pimlico for Sultanpore, 
there is not a word to show that the code is meant for India, or 
for an Oriental race at all. It is true that the testamentary 
portion of the code applies at present only to European resi- 
dents in India ; but the advisability of extending it to natives 
is under consideration, and this extension is only a matter of 
time. The result of over-great rapidity of legislation, and of 
unyielding adherence to English or Roman models in the 
Indian codes, must be that our laws will never have the 
slightest hold upon the people, and that, if we are swept from 
India, our laws will vanish with us. The Western character of 
our codes, and their want of elasticity and of adaptabiHty to 
Eastern conditions, is one among the many causes of our 
unpopularity. 

The old school Hindoos fear that we aim at subverting all 
their dearest and most venerable institutions, and the free- 
thinkers of Calcutta and the educated natives hate us because, 
while we preach culture and progress, we give them no chance 
of any but a subordinate career. The discontent of the first- 
named class we can gradually allay, by showing them the ground- 
lessness of their suspicions, but the shrewd Bengalee baboos 
are more difficult to deal with, and can be met only in one 
way — namely, by the employment of natives in offices of high 
trust, under the security afforded by the infliction of the most 
degrading penalties on proof of the smallest corruption. One 
of the points in which the policy of Akbar surpassed our own 
was in the association of qualified Hindoos with his Mohamedan 
fellow-countrymen in high places in his government. The fact, 
moreover, that native governments are still preferred to Britsh 
rule, is a strong argument in favour of the employment by us 
of natives ; for, roughly speaking, their governmental system 
differs from ours only in the employment of native officers in- 
stead of English. There is not now existent a thoroughly 
native government ; at some time or other, we have controlled 
in a greater or less degree the governments of all the native 
States. To study purely native rule, we should have to visit 
Caboul or Herat, and watch the Afghan princes putting out 



CHAP. XX.] INDIA. 553 

each other's eyes, while their people are engaged in never- 
ending wars, or in murdering strangers in the name of God. 

Natives might more safely be employed to fill the higher 
than the lower offices. It is more easy to find honest and 
competent native governors or councilmen than honest and 
efficient native clerks and policemen. Moreover, natives have 
more temptations to be corrupt, and more facilities for being so 
with safety, in low positions than in high. A native policeman 
or telegraph official can take his bribe without fear of detection 
by his European chief ; not so a native governor, with European 
subordinates about him. 

The common Anglo-Indian objections to the employment of 
natives in our service are, when examined, found to apply only 
to the employment of incompetent natives. To say that the 
native lads of Bengal, educated in our Calcutta colleges, are 
half educated and grossly immoral, is to say that, under a proper 
system of selection of officers, they could never come to be 
employed. All that is necessary at the moment is that we should 
concede the principle by appointing, year by year, more natives 
to high posts, and that, by holding the civil service examinations 
in India as well as in England, and by establishing throughout 
India well-regulated schools, we should place the competent 
native youths upon an equal footing with the English. 

That we should ever come to be thoroughly popular in India 
is not to be expected. By the time the old ruling families have 
died out, or completely lost their power, the people whom we 
rescued from their oppression will have forgotten that the 
oppression ever existed, and as long as the old families last, 
they will hate us steadily. One of the documents published in 
the Gazette of India^ while I was at Simla, was from the pen of 
Asudulla Muhamadi, a well-known Mohamedan of the North- 
West Provinces. His grievances were the cessation of the 
practice of granting annuities to the " sheiks of noble families," 
the conferring of the " high offices of Mufti, Sudr'-Ameen, and 
Tahsildar," on persons not of " noble extraction," " the educa- 
tion of the children of the higher and lower classes on the same 
footing, without distinction," " the desire that women should be 
treated like men in every respect," and "the formation of 
English schools for the education of girls of the lower order," 



554 GREATER BRTTAFX. [chap. xx. 

He ended his State paper by pointing out the ill effects of the 
practice of conferring on the poor "respectable berths, thereby 
enabling them to indulge in luxuries which their fathers never 
dreamt of, and to play the upstart ;" and declared that to a 
time-honoured system of class government there had succeeded 
" a state of things which I cannot find words to express." It 
is not likely that our rule will ever have much hold on the class 
that AsuduUa represents, for not only is our government in 
India a despotism, but its tendency is to become an imperi- 
alism, or despotism exercised over a democratic people, such as 
we see in France, and are commencing to see in Russia. 

We are levelling all ranks in India; we are raising the 
humblest men, if they will pass certain examinations, to posts 
which we refuse to the most exalted of nobles unless they can 
pass higher. A clever son of a bheestie, or sweeper, if he will 
learn English, not only may, but must rise to be a railway 
baboo, or deputy collector of customs ; whereas for Hindoo 
rajahs or Mohamedan nobles of Delhi creation, there is no 
chance of anything but gradual decline of fortune. Even our Star 
of India is democratic in its workins;: we refuse it to men of the, 
highest descent, to confer it on self-made viziers of native States, 
or others who were shrewd enough to take our side during the 
rebellion. All this is very modern, and full of " progress," no 
doubt ; but it is progress towards imperialism, or equality of 
conditions under paternal despotism. 

Not only does the democratic character of our rule set the 
old familiej against us, but it leads also to the failure of our 
attempt to call around us a middle class, an educated thinking 
body of natives with something to lose, who, seeing that we are 
ruling India for her own good, would support us heart and soul, 
and form the best of bucklers for our dominion. As it is, the 
attempt has long been made in name, but, as a matter of fact, 
we have humbled the upper class, and failed to raise a middle- 
class to take its place. We have crushed the prince without 
setting up the trader in his stead. 

The wide-spread hatred of the English does not prove that 
they are bad rulers ; it is merely the hatred that Easterns always 
bear their masters ; yet masters the Hindoos will have. Even 
the enlightened natives do not look with longing towards a 



CHAi>. XX.] IXBTA. 555 

future of self-government, however distant Most intelligent 
Hindoos would like to see the Russians drive us out of India, 
not that any of them think the Russians would be better rulers 
or kinder men, ^but merely for the pleasure of seeing their 
traditional oppressors beaten. What, then, are we to do ? The 
only justification for our presence in India is the education for 
freedom of the Indian races ; but at this moment they will not 
have freedom at a gift, and many Indian statesmen declare that 
no amount of education will ever fit them for it. For a score 
of centuries, the Hindoos have bribed and taken bribes, and 
corruption has eaten in?^o the national character so deeply, that 
those who are the best of judges declare that it can never be 
washed out. The analogy of the rise of other races leads us to 
hope, however, that the lapse of time will be sufficient to raise 
the Hindoos as it has raised the Huns. 

The ancients believed that the neighbourhood of frost and 
snow was fatal to philosophy and to the arts ; to the Cartha- 
ginians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians, the inhabitants of Gaul of 
Germany, and of Britain were rude barbarians of the frozen 
North, that no conceivable lapse of time could convert into 
anything much better than talking bears — a piece of empiricism 
which has a close resemblance to our view of India. It is idle 
to point to the tropics and say that free communities do not 
exist within those limits ; the map of the world will show that 
freedom exists only in the homes of the Enghsh race. France, 
the authoress of modern liberty, has failed as yet to learn how 
to retain the boon for which she is ever ready to shed her blood ; 
Switzerland, a so-called free State, is the home of the worst of 
bigotry and intolerance ; the Spanish republics are notoriously 
despotisms under democratic titles ; America, Australia, Britain, 
the homes of our race, are as yet the only dwelling-spots of 
freedom. 

There is much exaggeration in the cry that self-government, 
personal independence, and true manliness can exist only 
where the snow will lie upon the ground, that cringing slavish- 
ness and imbecile submission follow the palm-belt round the 
world. If freedom be good in one country, it is good in all, for 
there is nothing in its essence which should limit it in time or 
place : the only, question that is open for debate is whether 



556 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xx. 

freedom — an admitted good — is a benefit which, if once con- 
ferred upon the inhabitants of the tropics, will be maintained 
by them against invasion from abroad and rebelhon from 
within j if it be given bit by bit, each step being taken only 
when public opinion is fully prepared for its acceptance, there 
can be no fear that freedom will ever be resigned without a 
struggle. We should know that Sikhs, Kandians, Scindians, 
Marattas, have fought bravely enough for national independence 
to make it plain that they will struggle to the death for liberty 
as soon as they can be made to see its worth. It will take years 
to efface the stain of a couple of hundred years of slavery in the 
negroes of America, and it may take scores of years to heal the 
deeper sores of Hindostan; but history teaches us to believe 
that the time will come when the Indians will be fit for freedom. 

Whether the future advent of a better day for India be a fact 
or a dream, our presence in the country is justifiable. Were we 
to quit India, we must leave her to Russia or to herself If to 
Russia, the political shrewdness and commercial blindness of 
the Northern Power would combine to make our pocket suffer 
by loss of money as much as would our dignity by so plain a 
confession of our impotence ; while the unhappy Indians would 
discover that there exists a European nation capable of sur- 
passing Eastern tyrants in corruption by as much as it already 
exceeds them in dull weight of leaden cruelty and oppression. 
If to herself, unextinguishable anarchy would involve our 
Eastern trade and India's happiness in a hideous and lasting ruin. 

If we are to keep the country, we must consider gravely 
whether it be possible properly to administer its affairs upon the 
present system — whether, for instance, the best supreme govern- 
ment for an Eastern empire be a body composed of a chief 
invariably removed from office just as he begins to understand 
his duty, and a council of worn-out Indian officers, the whole 
being placed in the remotest corner of Western Europe, for the 
sake of removing the government from the " pernicious influence 
of local prejudice." 

India is at this moment governed by the Indian Council at 
Westminster, who are responsible to nobody. The Secretary 
of State is responsible to Parliament for a policy which he 
cannot control, and the Viceroy is a head-clerk. 



CHAP. XX.] INDIA. 557 

India can be governed in two ways ; either in India or in 
London. Under the former plan, we should leave the bureau- 
cracy in India independent, preserving merely some slight 
control at home — a control which should, of course, be purely 
parliamentary and English ; under the other plan — which is that 
to which it is to be hoped the people of England will command 
their representatives to adhere — India would be governed from 
London by the English nation, in the interests of humanity and 
civilization. Under either system, the Indian Council in 
London would be valuable as an advising body ; but it does 
not follow, because the Council can advise, that therefore they 
can govern, and to delegate executive power to such a board is 
on the face of it absurd. 

Whatever the powers to be granted to the Indian Council, it 
is clear that the members should hold office for the space of 
only a few years. So rapid is the change that is now making a 
nation out of what was ten years ago but a continent inhabited 
by an agglomeration- of distinct tribes, that no Anglo-Indian 
who has left India for ten years is competent even to advise 
the rulers, much less himself to share in the ruling of Hindo- 
stan. The objection to the government of India by the 
Secretary of State is, that the tenant of the office changes fre- 
quently, and is generally ignorant of native feelings and of 
Indian affairs. The difficulty, however, which attends the 
introduction of a successful plan for the government of India 
from London is far from being irremovable, while the objection 
to the paternal government of India by a Viceroy is that it 
would be wholly opposed to our constitutional theories, unfitted 
to introduce into our Indian system those democratic principles 
which we have for ten years been striving to implant, and even 
in the long run dangerous to our liberties at home. 

One reason why the Indian officials cry out against govern- 
ment from St. James's Park is, because they deprecate inter- 
ference with the Viceroy ; but were the Council abolished, except 
as a consultative body, and the Indian Secretaryship of State 
made a permanent appointment, it is probable that the Viceroy 
would be relieved from that continual and minute inter- 
ference with his acts which at present degrades his office in 
native eyes. The Viceroy would be left considerable power, 



558 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xx. 

and certainly greater power than he has at present, by the 
Secretary of State ; — that which is essential is merely, that the 
power of control, and responsible control, should lie in London. 
The Viceroy would, in practice, exercise the executive functions, 
under the control of a Secretary of State advised by an experi- 
enced Council and responsible to Parliament, and we should 
possess a system under which there would be that conjunction 
of personal responsibility and of skilled advice which is abso- 
lutely required for the good government of India. 

To a scheine which involves the government of India from at 
home, it may be objected, that India cannot be so well under- 
stood in London as in Calcutta. So far from this being the 
case, there is but little doubt among those who best know the 
India of to-day, that while men in Calcutta understand the wants 
of the Bengalee, and men in Lahore the feelings of the Sikh, 
India, as a whole, is far better understood in England than in 
any presidency town. 

It must be remembered, that with India within a day of Eng- 
land by telegraph, and within three weeks by steam, the old 
autocratic Governor-General has become impossible, and day 
by day the Secretary of State in London must become more 
and more the ruler of India. Were the Secretary of State 
appointed for a term of years, and made irremovable except by 
a direct vote of the House of Commons, no fault could be found 
with the results of the inevitable change : as it is, however, a 
council of advice will hardly be sufficient to prevent gross blun- 
dering while we allow India to be ruled by no less than four 
Secretaries of State in a single year. 

The chief considerations to be kept in view in the framing of 
a system of government for India are briefly these : a sufficient 
separation of the two countries to prevent the clashing of the 
democratic and paternal systems, but, at the same time, a con- 
trol over the Indian administration by the English people active 
enough to ensure the progressive amelioration of the former ; 
the minor points to be borne in mind are that in India we need 
less centralization, in London more permanence, and, in both, 
increased personal responsibility. All these requirements are 
satisfied by the plan proposed, if it be coupled with, the separa- 
tion of the English and Indian armies, the employment of 



CHAP. XX.] INDIA. 559 

natives in our service, and the creation of new governments for 
the Indus territories and Assam. Madras, Bombay, Bengal, 
Assam, the Central Provinces, Agra, the Indus, Oude, and 
Burmali, would form the nine presidencies, the Viceroy having 
the supreme control over our officers in the native States, and 
not only should the governors of the last seven be placed upon 
the same "footing with those of Madras and Bombay, but all the 
local governors should be assisted by a council of ministers who 
should necessarily be consulted, but whose advice should not be 
binding on the governors. The objections that are raised 
against councils do not apply to councils that are confined to 
the giving of advice, and the ministers are needed, if for no 
other purpose, at least to divide the labour of the Governor, for 
all our Indian officials are at present overworked. 

This is not the place for the suggestion of improvements in 
the detail^ of Indian government. The statement that all gene- 
ral observations upon India are necessarily absurd is not more 
true of moral, social, educational, and religious affairs than of 
mere governmental matters: "regulation system" and "non- 
regulation system;" "permanent settlement" and " thirty years' 
settlement ;" native participation in government, or exclusion of 
natives — each of these courses may be good in one part of India 
and bad in another. On the whole, however, it may be ad- 
mitted, that our Indian government is the best example of a 
well-administered despotism, on a large scale, existing in the 
world. Its one great fault is over-centralization ; for, although 
our rule in India must needs be despotic, no reason can be 
shown why its despotism should be minute. 

The greatest of the many changes in progress in the East is 
that India is being made — that a country is being created under 
that name where none has yet existed ; and it is our railroads, 
our annexations, and above all our centralising policy, that are 
doing the work. There is reason to fear that this change will be 
hastened by the extension of our new codes to the former " non- 
regulation provinces," and by government from at home, where 
India is looked upon as one nation, instead of from Calcutta, 
where it is known to be still composed of fifty ; but so rapid is 
the change, that already the Calcutta people are as mistaken in 
attempting to laugh down our phrase " the people of India," as 



56o GREATER BRITAIN, [chap. xx. 

we were during the mutiny, when we believed that there was an 
" India" writhing in our clutches. Whether the India which is 
being thus rapidly built up by our own hands will be friendly to 
us, or the reverse, depends upon ourselves. The two principles 
upon which our administration of the country might be based 
have long since been weighed against each other by the English 
people, who, rejecting the principle of a holding of India for 
the acquisition of prestige and trade, have decided that we are 
to govern India in the interest of the people of Hindostan. We 
are now called on to deliberate once more, but this time upon 
the method by which our principle is to be worked out. That 
our administration is already perfect can hardly be contended 
so long as no officer not very high in our Indian service dares 
to call a native "friend." The first of all our cares must be the 
social treatment of the people ; for while by the Queen's pro- 
clamation the natives are our fellow-subjects, they are in practice 
not yet treated as our fellow-men. 



56r 



CHAPTER XXI. 

Dependencies. 

When, on my way home to England, I found myself off Mocha, 
with the Abyssinian highlands in sight, and still more when we 
were off Massowah, with the peaks of Talanta plainly visible, 
I began to recall the accounts which I had heard at Aden of the 
proposed British colony on the Abyssinian table-lands, out of 
which the Home Government has since been frightened. The 
question of the desirability or the reverse of such a colony 
raises points of interest on which it would be advisable that 
people at home should at once take up a line. 

As it has never been assumed that Englishmen can dwell 
permanently, even upon high hills, under the equator, the pro- 
position for European colonization or settlement of tropical 
Africa may be easily dismissed, but that for the annexation of 
tropical countries for trade purposes remains. It has hitherto 
been accepted as a general principle regulating our intercourse 
with Eastern nations, that v/e have a moral right to force the 
dark-skinned races to treat us in the same fashion as that in 
which we are treated by our European neighbours. In practice 
we even now go much further than this, and inflict the blessings 
of Free Trade upon the reluctant Chinese and Japanese at the 
cannon's mouth. It is hard to find any law but that of might 
whereby to justify our dealings with Burmah, China, and Japan. 
We are apt to wrap ourselves up in our new-found national 
morality, and, throwing upon our fathers all the blame of the ill 
which has been done in India, to take to ourselves credit for 
the good ; but it is obvious to any one who watches the con- 
duct of our admirals, consuls, and traders in the China seas, 
that it is inevitable that China should fall to us as India fell, 

2 o 



5 6 2 GREA TER BRIT A IN. [chap. xxi. 

unless there should be a singular change in opinion at home, or 
unless, indeed, the Americans should be beforehand with us in 
the matter. To say this, is not to settle the disputed question of 
whether in the present improved state of feeling, and with the 
present control exercised over our Eastern officials by a dis- 
interested press at home, and an interested but vigilant press in 
India and the Eastern ports, government of China by Britain 
might not be for the advantage of the Chinese and the world, 
but it is at least open to serious doubt whether it would be to 
the advantage of Great Britain. Our ruling classes are already 
at least sufficiently exposed to the corrupting influences of 
power for us to hesitate before we decide that the widening of 
the national mind consequent upon the acquisition of the 
government of China would outweigh the danger of a spread at 
home of love of absolute authority, and indifference to human 
happiness and life. The Americans, also, it is to be hoped, 
will pause before they expose republicanism to the shock that 
would be caused by the annexation of despotically-governed 
States. In defending the Japanese against our assaults, and 
those of the active but unsuccessful French, they m.ay un- 
happily find, as we have often found, that protection and an- 
nexation are two words for the same thing. 

Although the disadvantages are more evident than the ad- 
vantages of the annexation for commercial purposes of such 
countries as Abyssinia, China, and Japan, the benefits are 
neither few nor hard to find. The abstract injustice of annexa,- 
tion cannot be said to exist in the cases of Afghanistan and 
Abyssinia, as the sentiment of nationality clearly has no exist- 
ence there, and as the worst possible form of British govern- 
ment is better for the mass of the people than the best con- 
ceivable rule of an Abyssinian chief. The dangers of annexa- 
tion in the weakening and corrupting of ourselves may not 
unfairly be set off against the blessings of annexation to the 
people, and the most serious question for consideration is that 
of whether dependencies can be said " to pay." Social progress 
is necessary to trade, and we give to mankind the powerful 
security of self-interest that we vv^ill raise the condition of the 
people, and, by means of improved communications, open the 
door to civilization. 



CHAP. XXI.] DEPENDENCIES. 563 

It may be objected to this statement that our exaggerated 
conscientiousness is the very reason why our dependencies 
commercially are failures, and why it is useless for us to be 
totaling up our loss and profits while we wilfully throw away 
the advantages that our energy has placed in our hands. If 
India paid as well as Java, it may be shown, we should be re- 
ceiving from the East 60 millions sterling a year for the support 
of our European officials in Hindostan, and the total revenue 
of India would be 200 or 250 millions, of which 80 millions 
would be clear profit for our use in England ; in other words, 
Indian profits would relieve us from all taxation in England, 
and leave us a considerable and increasing margin towards the 
abolition of the debt. The Dutch, too, tell us that their system 
is more agreeable to the natives than our o\ni clumsy though 
well-meant efforts for the improvement of their condition, which, 
although not true, is far too near the truth to allow us to rest in 
our complacency. 

The Dutch system having been well weighed at home, and 
deliberately rejected by the English people as tending to the 
degradation of the natives, the question remains how far de- 
pendencies from which no profits are exacted may be advan- 
tageously retained for mere trade purposes. At this moment, 
our most flourishing dependencies do not bear so much as their 
fair share of the expenses of the empire : — Ceylon herself pays 
only the nominal and not the real cost of her defence, and 
Mauritius costs nominally ;£"i 50,000 a year, and above half a 
million really in military expenses, of which the colony is ordered 
to pay ;^45,ooo, and grumbles much at paying it. India herself, 
although charged with a share of the non-effective expenses of 
our army, escapes scot free inVar-time, and it is to be remarked 
that the throwing upon her of a small portion of the cost of the 
Abyssinian war was defended upon every ground except the 
true one — namely, that as an integral part of the empire she 
ought to bear her share in imperial wars. It is true that, to 
make the constitutional doctrine hold, she also ought to be 
consulted, and that we have no possible machinery for con- 
sulting her — a consideration which of itself shows our Indian 
government in its proper liglit. 

Whether, indeed, dependencies pay or do not pay their actual 

202 



564 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxi. 

cost, their retention stands on a wholly different footing to that 
of colonies. Were we to leave Australia or the Cape, we should 
continue to be the chief customers of those countries : were we 
to leave India or Ceylon, they would have no customers at all ; 
for, falling into anarchy, they would cease at once to export 
their goods to us and to consume our manufactures. When a 
British Governor of New Zealand wrote that of every Maori 
who fell in war with us it might be said that, " from his ignorance, 
a man had been destroyed whom a few months' enlightenment 
would have rendered a valuable consumer of Briush manufac- 
tured goods," he only set forth with grotesque simplicity con- 
siderations which weigh with us all ; but while the advance of- 
trade may continue to be our chief excuse, it need not be our 
sole excuse for our Eastern dealings — even for use towards our- 
selves. Without repeating that which I have said with respect 
to India, we may especially bear in mind that, although the 
theory has suffered from exaggeration, our dependencies still 
form a nursery of statesmen and of warriors, and that we should 
irresistibly fall into national sluggishness of thought, were it 
not for the world-wide interests given us by the necessity of 
governing and educating the inhabitants of so vast an empire 
as our own. 

One of the last of our annexations was close upon our bow as 
we passed on our way from Aden up the Red Sea. The French 
are always angry when we seize on places in the East, but it is 
hardly wonderful that they should have been perplexed about 
Perim. This island stands in the narrowest place in the sea, in 
the middle of the deep water, and the Suez Canal being a French 
work, and Egypt under French influence, our possession of 
Perim becomes especially unpleasant to our neighbours. Not 
only this, but the French had determined themselves to seize it, 
and their fleet, bound to Perim, put in to Aden to coal. The 
Governor had his suspicions, and, having asked the French 
admiral to dinner, gave him unexceptionable champagne. The 
old gentleman soon began to talk, and directly he mentioned 
Perim, the governor sent a pencil-note to the harbour-master to 
delay the coaling of the ships, and one to the commander of a 
gunboat to embark as many artillerymen and guns as he could 
get on board in two hours, and sail for Perim. When the 



CHAP. XXI.] DEPENDENCIES. 565 

French reached the anchorage next day, they found the British 
flag flying, and a great show of guns in position. Whether 
they put into Aden on their way back to France history does 
not say. 

Perim is not the only island that lies directly in the shortest 
course for ships, nor are the rocks the only dangers of the Red 
Sea. One night about nine o'clock, when we were off the port 
of Mecca, I was sitting on the fo'castle, right fonvard, almost 
on the sprit, to catch what breeze we made, when I saw two 
country boats about 150 yards on the starboard bow. Our three 
lights were so bright that I thought we must be seen, but as the 
boats came on across our bows, I gave a shout, which was 
instantly followed by " hard a-port !" from the Chinaman on the 
bridge, and by a hundred yells from the suddenly awakened 
boatmen. Our helm luckily enough had no time to act upon 
the ship. I threw myself down under a stancheon, and the 
sail and yard of the leading boat fell on our deck close to my 
head, and the boats shot past us amid shouts of "fire," caused 
by the ringing of the alarm bell. When we had stopped the 
ship, the question came — had we sunk the boat ? We at once 
piped away the gig, with a Malay crew, and sent it off to look 
for the poor wretches — but after' half-an-hour, we found them 
ourselves, and found them safe except for their loss of canvas, 
and their terrible fright. Our pilot questioned them in Arabic, 
and discovered that each boat had on board 100 pilgrims ; but 
they excused themselves for not having a watch or light by 
saying that they had not seen us ! Between rocks and pilgrim- 
boats, Red Sea navigation is hard enough, and it is easy to see 
which way its difficulties will cause the scale to turn when the 
question lies between Euphrates Railway and Suez Canal. 



566 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxii. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

France in the East. 

It is no longer possible to see the Pyramids or even Pleliopolis 
in the solitary and solemn fashion in which they should be 
approached. English "going out" and "coming home " are 
there at all days and hours, and the hundreds of Arabs selling 
German coins and mummies of English manufacture are terribly 
out of place upon the desert. I went alone to see the Sphinx, 
and, sitting down on the sand, tried my best to read the riddle 
of the face, and to look through the rude carving into the inner 
mystery ; but it would not do, and I came away bitterly disap- 
pointed. In this modern democratic railway-girt world of ours, 
the ancient has no place ; the huge Pyramids may remain for 
ever, but we can no longer read them. A few months may see 
a cafe chantant at their base. 

Cairo itself is no pleasant sight. An air of dirt and degrada- 
tion hangs over the whole town, and clings to its people, from 
the donkey-boys and comfit-sellers to the pipe-smoking soldiers 
and the money-changers who squat behind their trays. The 
wretched fellaheen, or Egyptian peasantry, are apparently the 
most miserable of human beings, and their slouching shamble 
is a sad sight after the superb gait of the Hindoos. The slave- 
market of Cairo has done its work ; indeed, it is astonishing 
that the English should content themselves with a treaty in 
which the abolition of slavery in Egypt is decreed, and not take 
a single step to secure its execution, while the slave-market in 
Cairo continues to be all but open to the passer. That the 
Egyptian Government could put down slavery if it had the will, 
cannot be doubted by those who have witnessed the rapidity 
with which its officers act in visiting doubtful crimes upon the 



CHAP, xsii.] FRANCE IF THE EAST. 567 

wrong men. During my week's stay in Alexandria, two such 
cases came to my notice : — in the first, one of my feUow pas- 
sengers insuked two of the Albanian police, and was shot at by 
one of them (or thought he was) with a long pistol. A number 
of Englishmen, gathering from the public gaming-houses on the 
great square, rescued him, and beat off the cavasses ; and the 
next morning, marched down to their consulate and demanded 
justice. Our acting consul went straight to the head of the 
police, laid the case before him, and procured the condemnation 
to the galleys for ten years of the man who was said to have 
fired the shot, while the policeman who had looked on was 
imriediately bastinadoed in the presence of the passenger. The 
oth^r case was one of robbery at a desert village, from the tent 
of an English traveller. When he complained to the sheik, the 
order w^as given to bastinado the head men, and hold them 
responsible for the amount. The head men in turn gave the 
stict to the householders, and claimed the sum from them ; 
while these bastinadoed the vagrants, and actually obtained 
from them the money. Every male inhabitant having thus 
received the stick, it is probable that the actual culprit was 
readied, if, indeed^ he lived within the village. " Stick-back- 
sheesh" is a great institution in Egypt, but the Turks are not 
far behind. When the British Consulate at Bussorah was 
attacked by thieves some years ago, our Consul telegraphed the 
fact to the Pacha of Bagdad. The answer came at once : — 
" Bastinado forty men" — and bastinadoed they were, as soon as 
they had been selected at random from the population. 

Coming to Egypt from India, the Englishman is inclined to 
believe that, while our Indian Government is an averagely suc- 
cessful despotism, Egypt is misgoverned in an extraordinary 
degree. As a matter of fact, however, it is not fair to the King 
of Egypt that we should compare his rule with ours in India, 
and it is probable that his government is not on the whole 
worse than Eastern despotisms always are. Setting up as a 
" civilized ruler," the King of Egypt performs the duties of his 
position by buying guns which he uses in putting down insur- 
rections that he has fomented, and yachts for which he has no 
need ; and he appears to think that he has done all that Peter 
of Russia himself could have accomplished, when he sends a 



568 GEEATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxii. 

young Egyptian to Manchester to learn the cotton trade, or to 
London to acquire the principles of foreign commerce, and, on 
his return to Alexandria, sets him to manage the soap-works, or 
to conduct the viceregal band. The aping of the forms of 
" Western civilization," which in Egypt means French vice, 
makes the Court of Alexandria look worse than it is : — we 
expect the slave-market and the harem in the East, but the 
King of Egypt superadds the Trianon, and a bad imitation of 
Mabile. 

The Court influence shows itself in the actions of the people, 
or rather the influence at work upon the Court is pressing also 
upon the people. For knavery, no place can touch the modern 
Alexandria. One word, however, is far from describing all the 
infamies of the city. It surpasses Cologne for smells, Benares 
for pests, Saratoga for gaming, Paris itself for vice. There is a 
layer of French "civilization" of the worst kind over the semi- 
barbarism of Cairo ; but still the town is chiefly Orieatal. 
Alexandria, on the other hand, is completely Europeanized, 
and has a white population of seventy or eighty thousand. 
The Arabs are kept in a huge village outside the fortificatiDns, 
and French is the only language spoken in the hotels and 
shops. 

It is evident enough that the Suez Canal scheme has been 
from the beginning a blind for the occupation of Egypt by 
France, and that, however interesting to the shareholders may 
be the question of its physical or commercial success, the pro- 
babilities of failure have had but little weight with the French 
Government. The foundation of the Messagerie Company with 
national capital, to carry imaginary mails, secured the prepon- 
derance of French influence in the towns of Egypt, and it is 
not certain that we should not look upon the occupation of 
Saigon itself as a mere blind. 

Of the temporary success of the French policy there can be 
no doubt: the English railway guards have lately been dismissed 
from the Government railway line, and a huge tricolour floats 
from the entrance to the new docks at Suez, while a still more 
gigantic one waves over the hotel ; the King of Egypt, glad to 
find a third Power which he can play off, when necessaiy, 
against both England and Russia, takes shares in the canal. It . 



CHAP. XXII.] FRANCE IN THE EAST. 569 

is when we ask, " "WTiat is the end that the French have in 
view ?" that we find it strangely small by the side of the means. 
The French of the present day appear to have no foreign 
policy, unless it is a sort of desire to extend the empire of their 
language, their dance-tunes, and their fashions ; and the natural 
wish of their ruler to engage in no enterprise that will outlast 
his life prevents their having any such permanent policy as that 
of Russia or the United States. An Egyptian Pacha hardly put 
the truth too strongly when he said, " There is nothing perma- 
nent about France except Mabile." 

The Suez Canal is being pushed with vigour, although the 
labour of the hundreds of Greek and Italian navvies is very 
different to that of the tens of thousands of impressed fellaheen. 
The withdrawal from the Company of the forced labour of the 
peasants has demonstrated that the King is at heart not well- 
disposed towards the scheme, for the remonstrances of England 
have never prevented the employment of slave labour upon 
works out of which there was money to be made for the vice- 
regal purse. The difficulty of clearing and keeping clear the 
channel at Port Said, at the Mediterranean end, is well kno^\^l 
to the Pacha and his engineers : — it is not difficult, indeed, to 
cut through the bar, nor impossible to keep the cutting open, 
but the effect of the great piers will merely be to push the Nile 
silt farther seawards, and again and again new bars will form 
in front of the canal. That the canal is physically possible no 
one doubts, but it is hard to believe that it can pay. Even if 
we suppose, moreover, that the canal will prove a complete 
success, the French Government will only find that it has spent 
millions upon digging a canal for England's use. 

The neutralization of Egypt has lately been proposed by 
writers of the Comtist school, but to what end is far from clear. 
" The interests of civilization " are the pretext, but when 
summoned by a Comtist, " civilization " and " humanity " gene- 
rally appear in a French shape. Were we to be attacked in 
India by the French or Russians, no neutralization would pre- 
vent our sending our troops to India by the shortest road, and 
fighting wherever we thought best. If we were not so attacked, 
neutralization, as far as we are concerned, would be a useless 
ceremony. If France goes beyond her customary meddlesome- 



5 70 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. xxn. 

ness and settles down in Egypt, we shall evidently have to dis- 
lodge her, but to neutralize the country would be to settle her 
there ourselves. It would be idle to deny that the position of 
France in the East is connected with the claim put forth by her 
to the moral leadership of the world. The " chief power of 
Europe " and " leader of Christendom " must needs be impatient 
of the dominance of America in the Pacific and of Britain in 
the East, and seeks by successes on the side of India to bury 
the memories of Mexico. One of the hundred "missions of 
France," one of the thousand "Imperial ideas," is the "regene- 
ration of the East." Treacherous England is to be confined to 
her single island, and barbarous Russia to be shut up in the 
Siberian snows. England may be left to answer for herself, but 
before we surrender even Russia to the Comtist priests, we 
should remember that, just as the Russian despotism is dangerous 
to the world from the stupidity of its barbarism, so the French 
democracy is dangerous through its feverish sympathies, blunder- 
ing " humanity," and unlimited ambition. 

The present reaction against exaggerated nationalism is 
in itself a sign that our national mind is in a healthy state j 
but, while we distrust nationalism because it is illogical and 
narrow, we must remember that " cosmopolitanism " has been 
made the excuse for childish absurdities, and a cloak for des- 
perate schemes. Love of race, among the English, rests upon 
a firmer base than either love of mankind or love of Britain, for it 
reposes upon a subsoil of things known : the ascertained virtues 
and powers of the English people. For nations such as France 
and Spain, with few cares outside their European territories, 
national fields for action are, perhaps, too narrow, and the 
interests of even the vast territories inhabited by the English 
race may, in a less degree, be too small for English thought j 
but there is India, — and the responsibility of the absolute 
government of a quarter of the human race is no small thing. 
If we strive to advance ourselves in the love of truth, to act 
justly towards Ireland, and to govern India aright, we shall have 
enough of work to occupy us for many years to come, and shall 
leave a greater name in history than if we concerned ourselves 
with settling the affairs of Poland. If we need a wider range 
for our sympathies than that which even India will supply, we 



CHAP. XXII.] FRANCE IN THE EAST. 57: 

may find it in our friendships with the other sections of the race; 
and if, unhappily, one result of the present awakening of England 
to free life should be a return of the desire to meddle in the 
affairs of other folk, we shall find a better outlet for our energy 
in aiding our Teutonic brethren in their struggle for unity than 
in assisting Imperial France to spread Benoitonisme through 
the world. 

We cannot, if we would, be indifferent spectators of the 
extravagances of France : if she is at present weak in the East, 
she is strong at home. At this moment, we are spending ten or 
fifteen millions a year in order that we may be equal with her 
in military force, and we hang upon the words of her ruler to 
know whether w^e are to have peace or war. Although it may 
not be wise for us to declare that this humiliating spectacle 
shall shortly have an end, it is at least advisable that we should 
refrain from aiding the French in their professed endeavours to 
obtain for other peoples liberties which they are incapable of 
preserving for themselves. 

If tire English race has a "mission" in the world, it is the 
making it impossible that the peace of mankind on earth should 
depend upon the will of a single man. 



S12 GREATEE BRITAIN. [chap, xxiii. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

The English. 

In America we have seen the struggle of the dear races against 
the cheap — the endeavours of the Enghsh to hold their own 
against the Irish and Chinese. In New Zealand, we found the 
stronger and more energetic race pushing from the earth the 
shrewd and laborious descendants of the Asian Malays; in 
Australia, the English triumphant, and the cheaper races 
excluded from the soil not by distance merely, but by arbitrary 
legislation ; in India, we saw the solution of the problem of the 
officering of the cheaper by the dearer race. Everywhere we 
have found that the difficulties which impede the progress to 
universal dominion of the English people lie in the conflict with 
the cheaper races. The result of our survey is such as to give 
us reason for the belief that race distinctions will long continue, 
that miscegenation will go but little way towards blending 
races ; that the dearer are, on the whole, likely to destroy the 
cheaper peoples, and that Saxondom will rise triumphant from 
the doubtful struggle. 

The countries ruled by a race whose very scum and outcasts 
have founded empires in every portion of the globe, even now 
consist of 9^ millions of square miles, and contain a population 
of 300 millions of people. Their surface is five times as great 
as that of the empire of Darius, and four and a half times as 
large as the Roman Empire at its greatest extent. It is no 
exaggeration to say that in power the English countries would 
be more than a match for the remaining nations of the world, 
whom in the intelligence of their people and the extent and 
wealth of their dominions they already considerably surpass. 
Russia gains ground steadily, we are told, but so do we. If we 
take maps of the English-governed countries and of the Russian 



CHAP, xxiii.] THE ENGLISH. 5 73 

countries of fifty years ago, and compare them with the Enghsh 
and Russian countries of to-day, we find that the Saxon has out- 
stripped the Muscovite in conquest and in colonization. The 
extensions of the United States alone are equal to all those of 
Russia. Chili, La Plata, and Peru must eventually become 
English : the Red Indian race that now occupies those countries 
cannot stand against our colonists ; and the future of the table 
lands of Africa and that of Japan and of China is as clear. Even 
in the tropical plains, the negroes alone seem able to withstand 
us. No possible series of events can prevent the English race 
itself in 1970 numbering 300 millions of beings — of one national 
character and one tongue. Italy, Spain, France, Russia become 
pigmies by the side of such a people. 

Many who are well aware of the power of the English nations 
are nevertheless disposed to believe that our own is morally, 
as well as physically, the least powerful of the sections of the 
race, or, in other words, that we are overshadowed by America 
and Australia. The rise to power of our southern colonies is, 
however distant, and an alliance between ourselves and America 
is still one to be made on equal terms. Although we are forced 
to contemplate the speedy loss of our manufacturing supremacy 
as coal becomes cheaper in America and dearer in Old England, 
we have nevertheless as much to bestow on America as she has 
to confer on us. The possession of India offers to ourselves 
that element of vastness of dominion which, in this age, is needed 
to secure width of thought and nobility of purpose ; but to 
the English race our possession of India, of the coasts of Africa 
and of the ports of China offers the possibility of planting free 
institutions among the dark-skinned races of the world. 

The ultimate future of any one section of our race, however 
is of little moment by the side of its triumph as a whole, but the 
povv^er of English laws and English principles of government is 
not merely an English question — its continuance is essential to 
the freedom of mankind. 

Steaming up from Alexandria along the coasts of Crete and 
Arcadia, and through the Ionian Archipelago, I reached Brin- 
disi, and thence passed on through Milan towards home. This 
is the route that our Indian mails should take until the Euphrates 
road is made. 



5 74 



APPENDIX. 



A MAORI DINNER. 

For those who would make trial of Maori dishes, here is a 
native bill-of-fare, such as can be imitated in the South of 
England :— 

HAKARI MAORI— A MAORI FEAST. 
BILL-OF-FARE. 

SOUP. 

KoTA KoTA Any shell-fish. 

FISH. 

Inanga Whitebait (boiled in milk, with leeks). 

PiHARAU . . . . . Lamprey (stewed). 
Tuna Eels (steamed). 

MADE-DISHES. 

PuKEKO . . . . . . Moor-hen (steamed). 

KouRA Craw-fish (boiled). 

Tui Tui Thrush (roast). 

Kereru Pigeon (baked in clay). 

ROAST. 

Pooka Pork (^/^^r/ pig). 

game. 
Parera Wild Duck (roasted on embers). 

VEGETABLES. 

Paukena Pumpkin. 

Kamu Kamu Vegetable Marrow. 

Kaputi Cabbage (steamed). 

KuMATA Sweet Potatoes. 

SWEETS. 

Tataramoa .... Cranberries (steamed). 

Taua Damsons (steamed with sugar). 

DESSERT. 

Karamu , Currants. 



5 75 



INDEX. 



Aborigines, American treatment 
of, contrasted with English, 85, 
86 ; extirpation of, in Tasmania, 
354 ; hostihty of Enghsh mihtai;;' 
to, 357 ; contempt of the settlers 
for, ib. 

Acapulco [see Mexico). 

Adelaide, climate of, 367 ; curious 
fact relating to wheat trade, 368 ; 
' ' the farinaceous village, " so called 
by Victorians, ib. ; character of the 
buildings, dress, and people, 368, 
369 ; the bay of, at early morning, 

375- 
Agi-a _ [see India : — Mohamedan 

Cities). 

Alabama claims, feeling of Ameri- 
cans respecting, 217; their opinion 
of England's refusal to arbitrate 
on the entire question, 217, 218. 

Albany [see Convict). 

Alexandria, 568 [see also France in 

Eg>Tt). 
Allahabad {see India : — ]SIoham_edan 

Cities). 

Alleghanies, eastern and western 
slopes of, 72. 

America, wear and tear of life in, 
39 ; indoor life of children, ib. ; 
unhealthiness of tilling virgin soil, 
&c., ib. ; politics discarded by the 
most intellectual men in the slave - 
ruling days, 41 ; new map of the 
States, 51 ; splendid appropria- 
tions for educational purposes, 63 
{see Pacific Railroad) ; railways 
preceding population, 68 ; North 
America, conformation of, as com- 



pared with other continents, 72 ; 
American scenery, 161 ; difficulty 
of forming an idea of America, 
223 ; apparent Latinization of, 
ib. ; power of, now predominant 
in the Pacific, 287 ; democracy 
of, different from that of Australia, 
324 ; social difference, ib. 

American Desert, the, 94 ; alkali 
dust, 94, 131, 144, 207. 

Union, not likely to fall to 

pieces, 198, 274 ; tendency of the 
time to great powers, not small 
ones, 198 ; interest of all the 
States in iinion, 198, 199 ; real 
danger from the seizure of the 
Atlantic coast cities by the Irish, 
199 ; shape of North America, 
rendering almost impossible the 
existence of distinctive peoples 
within it, 225. 

opinion of Great Britain, 

France, and Russia, 201 ; of the 
Fenians and Irish complaints, 216; 
the Alabama claims, 217 — 219. 

■ Parties, Republican and 

Democratic, 205, 206 ; Radical 
Avatchfulness needed to guard the 
country against great dangers, 
207 ; great issue involved in the 
struggle between the parties, ib. ; 
possibility of the future abolition 
of the Presidency, 208. 

• Sensitiveness to English 



opinion, 220 ; an instance of the 
injustice done to Americans during 
the war, ib. ; their firmness while 
the Trent affair was pending, ib. 



5 76 



INDEX. 



Ann Arbor institute, men sent by it 
to the war, 62, ; officers returned 
to complete their studies, ib. 

Artemus Ward, joke of, to Elder 
Stenhouse, 108 ; in Virginia city, 
140. 

Atlantic States of America [see 
Western States). 

Attar of roses [see India : — Um- 
ritsvir, ) 

Auckland, effect on, of the Banana- 
tree, 19 {see also Australia and 
Rival Colonies). 

Aurora, in California, 146. 

Austin, the pleasures and immuni- 
ties of a Western tour, 135 ; 
Chinese quarter of, 135, 136 ; a 
farewell " swop," 136. 

Australasia, misuse of the term in 
England, 291 {see also Rival Colo- 
nies) ; youth of Australia and their 
future, 295 ; climate of, ib. ; eager 
democracy of, ib. ; different from 
the republicanism of the United 
States, zb. {see Coal) ; poetic native 
names, 314, 315 ; social differ- 
ences between Australia and 
America, 324 ; prospects of, 387 ; 
progress and extent of, ib. ; ob- 
stacles to the peopling of the 
whole of, ib. ; want of railroads, 
388 ; small amount of agricultural 
land as compared with extent of 
territory, 389 ; moral and intellec- 
tual health of, ib. ; love of mirth, 
and absence of the American 
downrightness, &c., in pursuit of 
tnith, ib. ; waste of food, ib. ; 
manners, &c., ib. ; dress, ib. ; 
imitation of home customs, ib. ; 
the University of Sydney, 390 ; 
its Conservatism as distinguished 
from the Radicalism of the West- 
ern Universities, 391. 

Australia, rivaliy of the colonies of, 
69. 

West {see Convicts). 

South, probability of be- 
coming the granary of the Pacific 
colonies, 368 ; production of 
wheat, 370 ; the land system, 
370, 371 (^^^ Women, 371, 373) ; 
Scotch and German immigrants, 
373 > political life of the colony, 



374 ; expedition to fix a new capi- 
tal for the northern territory, ib. ; 
possibility that the north may be 
found a land of gold, 375 ; from 
South to West Australia, 376. 

Ballarat {see Victorian Ports). 

Ballot {see Tasmania). 

Banana-tree, injurious effect of, in 
affording food without labour in 
the Southern States of America, 
Panama, Ceylon, Mexico, Auck- 
land, &c., 19 ; a devil's agent, 
ib. ; danger to Florida and Louisi- 
ana, 20. 

Benares {see India). 

Bendigo {see Sandhurst). 

Benita, Cape, 176, 

Bentham, his philosophy in Utah, 

lOI. 

Bhawulpore {see India : — Native 
States). 

Black Mountains {see Rocky Moun- 
tains), 93. 

Bombay {see India : — Bombay) . 

Boston, its Elizabethan English and 
old English names, 42 ; its readi- 
ness during the war, 44. 

Brannan, the chief mover in re- 
pressing disorders by lynch law 
in California, 165 ; his speech to 
his fellow-citizens, 167, 

Brigham Young, Elder Evans, the 
"Shaker's" opinion of, 99; a 
conversation of three hours with, 
100 ; his blessing at parting, ib. ; 
" Is Brigham sincere ?" 100 ; his 
position as a Prophet, while in 
fact a utilitarian deist, loi ; his 
practical revelations, ib. ; and 
manner of announcing them, ib. ; 
his definition of the highest in- 
spiration, 102 ; his position among 
his people^ ib. ; his immense per- 
sonal influence, 103 ; his sons sent 
out, each to work his own way in 
the world, 122. 

Brisbane {see Queensland). 

Broadbrim, the, mark of the Southern 
Guerilla, 4. 

Buffalo herds on the plains, 77 ; 
skeletons of, ib. 

Buffalo town, gloom of, 57. 

Buller, the {see Hokitika). 



ISDEX. 



Sll 



Cairo, dirt and degradation of, 
566 ; slave market, ib. ; punish- 
ment by selection, 567 ; mis- 
government of the country, 567, 
568 {see also French in Egypt). 

Calcutta [see India). 

California and Nevada, rectification 
of frontiers of, 145. 

California, the terms Golden State 
and El Dorado well applied to, 
150 ; scenei-y, 153 ; names given 
to places by diggers, 154, 155 ; 
luxury, &c., 156 (j^"^ Lynch Law) ; 
Episcopalianism flourishing in, 
182 ; its prospects in the Pacific, 
ib. ; nitro-glycerine, the nightmare 
of, 183 ; the valley of, 184 ; posi- 
tion of, on the overland route to 
the Pacific, 193 ; extent of, ib. ; 
climate, ib. 

Californian celebrities, portraits of, 

139. 
Cambridge, Mass. {see Harvard). 

Canada, 46 {see Quebec) ; religion 
and politics, 49 ; disunion of 
French and Irish Catholics, 50 ; 
French support of the Confedera- 
tion scheme, ib. ; Fenians in, ib.; 
need of British Columbia to the 
Confederation, ib. ; difficulties in 
the way of real confederation, 
51, 52 ; emigration to, ib. ; emi- 
gration from, to the United States, 
53; jealousy of the Canadian States, 
ib. ; their dislike to America, 54 ; 
difficulty of defending, ib. ; pro- 
tective duties, ib. ; advantages 
of independence, ib. ; narrowness 
of English views respecting, 55 ; 
belief of the Canadians that they 
possessed the only possible road 
to China for the trade of the 
future, 64 {see Pacific Railroad). 

Canterbury, New Zealand, Episco- 
palian colony, 247 ; province of, « 
divided both politically and geo- 
graphically, 248; antagonism be- 
tween the Christchurch people 
an d the diggers, 248 ; dignified 
Episcopalian character of Christ- 
church, 249 ; its importation of 
rooks from England to caw in the 
elm-trees of the cathedral close, 
while Hokitika imports men, 250. 



Capital, future, of the United States, 

73-. 
Carolina, North, crackers, 5. 

Cartier, early explorer, 64. 

Cashmene {see India : — Colonization 
and Native States). 

Caste, assailed by railways and tele- 
graph, 425 ; difficulty of discover- 
ing the opinion of a Hindoo, 433; 
British ignorance of the real feel- 
ing of the people, 434 ; census as 
viewed by the Hindoos, ib. ; its 
revelations with respect to caste 
and " callings," 435 ; beggars, ib.; 
superstition, 436 ; a play at de- 
monology, ib. ; the praying wheel, 
437 ; a saint's privileges in the 
days of the Emperor Akbar, 437 ; 
strength of caste, 439 ; mission- 
aries and Hindoo reformers, ib. ; 
Hindoo deists, 440 ; Christians, 
441 ; different position of native 
Catholics and Protestants, ib. ; 
fewness of native Christians, ib. ; 
infanticide, 442 ; remarkable 
changes in the last few years, 442 ; 
progress of the spirit of Christi- 
anity, 443. 

Catholicism not ''fashionable" in 
America, 182. 

Caucus, King, 211 ; Americans, on 
the derivation of the term, 212. 

Cawnpore {see India : — Mohamedan 
Cities). 

Cemeteries, Hollywood, Richmond, 
13 ; Lone Mountain Cemetery in 
California, the most beautiful in 
America, 177 ; other American 
cemeteries, ib. 

Census, curious results of, in India, 
434—436. 

Centre, government from the, 70; 
ancient and modern views of, 70, 
71 ; centre of the United States, 
72. 

Ceylon {see Kandy). 

Ceylon, Maritime, 403 ; the streets 
of Point de Galle, 404 ; women 
and men of, ib. ; mixture of races, 
405 ; American missionaries, 
quaint humour of, ib. ; beggars, 
ib. ; gem and jewel sellers, trade 
in precious stones, ib. ; British 
soldiers in white, 406 ; heat at 
2 P 



5 78 



INDEX. 



night, ib. ; the morning gun, 407 ; 
character of the Cinghalese, zb. ; 
translucent water, and brilliance 
of colour at the bottom, 408 ; a 
Cinghalese dinner, id. ; a stage- 
coach ride to Columbo, id. ; aspect 
of the fine road, crowded with all 
ranks of the people, 408, 409 ; one 
continuous village, 409 ; dense 
population and food of the people 
on the coast, td. ; Columbo, zd. ; 
trees and foliage, 410 ; a garden 
■scene, zd.yFort, or "European 
town " of, id. ; the most graceful 
street in the world, zd. ; the peak 
where Adam mourned his son a 
hundred years, ib. ; Ceylon Coffee 
Company's Establishment, 411 ; 
steam factory, ib. ; French Catho- 
lic priests, ib. ; their success, ib. ; 
the old Dutch quarter, 412 ; rapid 
changes from heat to cold, ib. 

Chaudiere Falls (Ottawa), 56. 

Chicago {see San Francisco and Chi- 
cago, &c,). 

Chickahominy, the, scene of M'Clel- 
lan's defeat, 9. 

China, coolies from, in the Southern 
States of America, 19; "one 
man and a Chinaman," 186 ; a 
Chinese theatre, ib. ; peculiarity 
of its drama, ib. ; the second 
month and third act of the play, 
187 ; a Chinese restaurant, 188 ; 
saucer and chopsticks for the 
Author, ib. ; gaming-houses, 189 ; 
Chinese industry and cleanliness, 
ib. ; similarity of faces common 
to all coloured races, ib. ; benevo- 
lent societies, 190 ; wealth of 
merchants, ib. ; prejudice against, 
on the part of the Americans, as 
also on that of the Australians, 
190, 191 ; Chinese expostulations 
against the prejudice, 191 ; cow- 
ardice of, ib. ; practical slavery in 
California, ib. ; the Irish of Asia, 
ib. ; capability for work, ib. ; the 
serious side of the Chinese problem, 
192. 

Chinese, first arrival among, 136 ; 
in California, 153 ; a tiny Chinese 
theatre, 154; as taxpayers, ib, {see 
China) ; at Melbourne, 302 ; at 



Sandhurst, 310; anti- Chinese 
mobs, ib. ; unjust treatment of, 
310, 311 ; hunted with blood- 
hounds, 311 ; marriage between, 
and Irish women, ib. ; character 
of, as citizens in Australia, 312; 
restaurants of, ib. ; in the Austra- 
lian labour-market, 343 — 345. 

Churches in America, Catholic and 
Episcopalian, 182 — 227 ; Spiritual- 
ists and Unitarians, ib. ; Shakers 
and Communists, ib. ; Mormons, 
ib. ; Radical Unitai'ians, ib. ; tenets 
and claims of the Spiritualists, 
228 ; the Spiritual Clarion, ib. ; 
number of Spiritualists in America, 
ib. ; the Germans mostly pure 
Materialists, 229 ; {see also Canter- 
bury, Otago, ajzd New Zealand) ; 
Catholics, in Australia, 322; "god- 
less education," 333 ; churches 
in Victoria nearly all of the well- 
known English names, 328 ; ab- 
sence of the American names, ib. ; 
dignity of character arising from 
the American religious feeling, 
329 ; Australian churches, 391 ; 
Hindoo churches, English and 
native, 438 ; church of Hindoo 
Deists, 439 — 443 ; a Sikh revival, 
486 ; Parsee religion, 534. 

Cincinnati, smoke of, 57. 

Civilization, limits of Westward, 573. 

Coal {see Pacific), in New South 
Wales, 300 ; its importance to 
Australia, ib. ; value to Sydney, 
301. 

Coalville, the Mormon Newcastle, 
98. 

Cocoas, Island of, kingdom of John 
Ross, 403. 

Colonial Government {see Squatter 
a7zd Democracy). 

Colonies, taxation of England in aid 
of M^ealthy, 393, 394 ; of Canada, 

394 ; exclusion of English produc- 
tions from, ib.; cost to England, 
ib. ; refusal of the, to contribute 
towards the cost of Imperial wars, 
ib. ; readiness of the old American 
colonists to do so, ib. ; position of 
Imperial soldiers in the colonies, 

395 ; absurdity of supposing that 
the Australians would be in dan- 



INDEX. 



579 



ger if separated from England, ib. ; 
our defence of, necessarily of least 
value when most needed, 396 ; and 
really a source of weakness to the 
colonies, ib. ; separation no loss to 
England, ib. ; trade with Canada 
and with the United States of 
America, 397 ; with Egypt, ib. ; 
question of the outlet for popula- 
tion, ib. ; strength of great and 
small states, ib. ; colonies pre- 
venting the insularity of mind 
that might belong to a nation of a 
limited area, 398 ; separation not 
to be desired if union can be con- 
tinued on fair terms to the mother 
land, and with advantage to the 
colonies, 398 ; if not so, separa- 
tion not dangerous to either, 399, 
Coloradan farm, 79 ; a Coloradan 
boast, 82; Coloradan "boys," a 
fine handsome race, 92 ; strange 
insects, ib. 
Colorado, rival Governors of, 80 ; 
great idea of Gilpin the Pioneer, 
ib. ; extent and beauty of country, 
89 — 91 ; Upper Colorado, or 
Green River, 95. 
Columbo (see Ceylon, Maritime). 
Conservative, Colonial, what is a, 

317 {see Squatters). 
Convicts {see Tasmania), settlement 
of South Australia, 376 ; petition 
to be made a penal settlement, ib, ; 
convicts or emancipists in the co- 
lony, 377 ; population of West 
Australia, ib. ; convict escapes, 
ib. ; punishment, ib. ; "bolters 
for a chaiige," 378 ; murder to es- 
cape convict labour, ib. ; trans- 
portation, past and present, 378, 
379 ; entire colonies formed of 
convicts, 379; "society" at 
Botany Bay, ib. ; all professions, 
&c., filled by convicts, ib. ; peti- 
tion against transportation from 
Tasmania, ib. ; fearful demoraliza- 
tion of the colony, 380 ; free 
female labourers sent out, 381 ; 
the assignment system, ib. ; crime 
in the colony, 382 ; bushrangers, 
ib. ; end of the system, ib. ; demo- 
ralization of the convict voyage, 
383 ; horrid conversation, ib. ; the 



hope that Tasmania may be puri- 
fied by the gold-find and free selec- 
tion, ib. ; the transportation sys- 
tem, ib. ; its cost, 384 ; its severity 
to the least guilty, ib. ; the future, 

384, 385- 
Co-operative labour, negro [see 

Davis). 
Costa Rica, 222, 
Ciunberlaiid and Merrimac, wrecks 

of, 4- 

Danites, 102 ; Porter Rockwell, 
chief of, 126 ; strange stories of, 
ib. ; bands organized to defend the 
first presidency of the Mormons, 
ib. ; their reported deeds, zb. 

Davidson, Mount, Nevada, 142 
its silver mines, 143. 

Davis, Joseph (brother of Jefferson 
Davis), scheme of, for negro co- 
operative labour, 21. 

Deseret (the Mormon countr)'), 
"Land of the Bee," 116. 

Devil's Gate, Nevada, 143, 

Diego Mendoza's discoveiy of Cali- 
fornia, 150. 

Dirt storm, a, 78. 

Dixon, Mr. Hepworth, meetingwith, 
at St. Louis, 69 ; name in Ne- 
brasca, 93 ; parting from the A\\- 
thor, 125. 

Democracy {see Squatters), colonial, 
322 ; payment of members, ib. ; 
reasons for, ib. ; the Catholic party 
in power, ib. ; driven from office 
on the question of appointing only 
Irishmen to the police, 323 ; the 
U'Shaughnessey Government, ib. ; 
Victorians mending the constitu- 
tion, ib. ; democracy of Victoria 
not American but English in tone, 
324 ; difference between the de- 
mocracy of Victoria and New 
South Wales, 326 ; earnestness 
of colonial democracy in the cause 
of education, ib. ; danger of the 
crushing influence of democracy 
upon individuality, 328 ; no great 
party in the colonies at all like 
the great Republican party of 
America, 329 ; the future of Aus- 
tralian Democracy, 329 ; tendency 
of the women to cling to the old 
2 P 2 






IXDEX. 



" colonial court " society, id. ; de- 
mocratic principles in Australia, 
3. 

Denver, letter from, 74 ; vigilance 
committees in, 1 74. 

Dependencies, English 561 ; Abys- 
sinian vi^ar, id. ; free trade forced 
on China and Japan, id. ; future 
policy of England and America 
with respect to China, 561, 562 ; 
profit and loss of our dependen- 
cies, 563 ; the Dutch system, id. ; 
deliberately rejected by the En- 
glish people, id. ; cost of several 
dependencies, id. ; India's part in 
the Abyssinian war, id ; the re- 
tention of dependencies and colo- 
nies on different grounds, 564 ; 
India as a nursery of warriors and 
statesmen, id. ; the advantage to 
a nation of having world-wide 
interests to govern, id. ; seizure 
of Perim, id. ; amusing incident 
of, id. 

Drama, Chinese, peculiarity of, 187. 

Dutch element of population gone 
from New York, 29. 

Dutch gap, 7. 

East, the first view of, 385. 

Education, "godless," in Australia, 
323 ; earnestness of the colonial 
democracy in the cause of, 326 ; 
the Australian as compared with 
the English view of the real use 
of, 327 ; illiterate men in the co- 
lonies striving to educate their 
childi-en, id. 

Eldorado, 150 — 4. 

Emerson, his opinion of the vitality 
of Mormonism, 123. 

Emigrants, classes of, that do not 
succeed, and that do, 298 ; ten- 
dency to hang about great towns 
in America and Australia, 302. 

English, old, names in the South- 
ern States of America, 11, 12; 
and families, 12 ; in Boston, 42 ; 
flowers at the New Zealand dig- 
gings, 240 ; officers at the New 
Zealand diggings, 245. 

English race, pushing on towards 
the setting sun, 197 {see Race in. 
America) ; in the struggle of races, 



572 ; extent of distiicts ruled by 
the English race, id. ; the Saxon 
has outstripped the Muscovite, 

573 ; alliance on equal terms with 
America, id. ; prospects of the 
race as a whole, id. 

Episcopalian Church in America, 
flourishing, 182, 

Fenian Brothers, the, 214; meet- 
ings of, in New York, Chicago, 
and Canada, id. ; Irish support of, 
id ; nature of Irish antipathy to 
Great Britain, id. ; its probable 
effect, id. ; the Irish at home not 
Fenians in the American sense, 
215 ; land laws in Ireland, id. ; 
unsatisfactory position of Irishmen 
in America, 216; Fenian agree- 
ment to drop the word ' ' English " 
as applied to language, and to use 
only the term "American," id,; 
opinion of Americans respecting 
Fenianism, id. ; the raid into 
Canada and the St. Alban's raid, 
217 ; Fenian power owing to the 
anti-English feeling of the Demo- 
cratic party and the Aladama 
claims, id. 

Flies, the two, 280 ; probable cause 
of English natural productions 
supplanting the Maori ones in 
New Zealand, 280, 281 ; the En- 
glish fly beats down and will ex- 
terminate the Maori fly, 281 ; 
suitability of the New Zealand 
soil and climate for English pro- 
ductions — men, seeds, and insect 
germs, id. ; the Maori differs from 
other aboriginal races — he farms, 
owns villages and ships, is a good 
rider, mechanic, soldier, sailor, 
and trader, yet he is passing away 
like the native fly, 282 ; the de- 
scendants of Captain Cook's pigs, 
id. ; conduct of the British Govern- 
ment towards the Maories, 283, 
284 {see Thompson, WiUiam) ; 
half-breeds, 284 ;" a chance for the 
Maories surviving by miscegena- 
tion, id. ; unchastity of the Maori 
unmarried women, " Christian as 
well as heathen," id. {see also 
Pacific). 



IJDEX. 



58r 



Florida, banana in, 20. 

Florida privateer, under water, 6. 

Forged notes, novel agreement of 
Colorado and Nevada people 
respecting, 141. 

Freedom and slaveiy, their contrary 
effects, 10. 

Free labour and slave labour, 16. 

Freemasonry of travel, 1 34. 

Fremont, the Pathfinder, his report 
of Utah, 98 ; his conquest in the 
West, 177. 

French, attempt of, to precede us in 
New Zealand and Australia, 364 ; 
possessions in India, 408 ; the 
island of Perim, 564 ; France in 
the East, 566 ; state of Egypt, 
ib. ; preponderance of French in- 
fluence there, 568 ; the Suez 
Canal, ib. ; its commercial success 
not of first importance to the 
French Government, ib. ; French 
power played off by the King of 
Eg}^pt against England and Russia, 
568 ; prospects of the canal, 569 ; 
and use to England, ib. ; pro- 
posed neutralization of Egypt, ib. ; 
French aims. in Eg}-pt, id. ; Comt- 
ist theories, ib. ; nationalism and 
cosmopolitanism, 570 ; the work 
of England as distinguished from 
that of France, ib. 

Galle {see point de Galle). 

Geelong {see Victorian Ports), 

Germans, justice-loving, their descen- 
dants in Western America, 171 ; 
their influence on the religious 
thought of America, 229. 

Gold and silver diggers, contempt 
of the former for the latter, 143. 

Gold, discovery of, in any part of 
the world, certain to be followed 
by English government there, 198. 

Golden City, 1 76 ; seeing the "lions" 
there, ib. ; subterranean forces, 1 78; 
"What Cheer House," ib. ; do^ 
mestic seiwants, their enviable 
position, 179 ; hotel life, ib. ; ex- 
cellency of climate, 181 ; gaity of 
the people, ib. ; mixed popula- 
tion, 182. 

Golden Gate, the gap in the Con- 
tra Costa rage of mountains by 



which the Pacific breeze rushes on 

San Francisco, 180 ; beneficial 

effects of the breeze, ib. ; curious 

facts connected with it. 
Gilpin, Governor. 93, 193. 
Grand Plateau, overtaken on, by a 

company of " overlanders, " 131 ; 

compliments in the desert, ib. 
Grant, General, 7 5 the secret of his 

success, 10. 
Great Salt Lake City, 129 ; the lake 

gradually sinking, 130 ; its extent, 

145. 
Greely, Horace, 130, 146, 
Guatemala, 222. 

Hangtown, where lynch law was 
inaugurated, 154. 

Hank Monk's "piece," 146; a 
reckless drive, ib. 

Harvard College (Cambridge, 
Mass.), foundation of, 36 ; the 
Harvard family, ib. ; defects of 
the college, 36 ; its need of a ten 
days' revolution, ib. ; hope of re- 
form, 37 ; new constitution, ib. ; 
outdoor sports, 38, 40 ; " Alumni 
celebration," ib. ; New England' 
love for, ib. ; old students, ib. ; 
past reform, 41 ; its noble bands 
of volunteers for the war, ib. ; 
classic repose of the town, 42. 

Heights, the, among the ' ' Nameless 
Alps " of Western America, sup- 
per on, at 8 a.m., 131. 

Himalayan yak, its suitability for 
the desert, 94. 

Hobarton, {see Tasmania). 

Hodson, Captain, his shooting down 
the sons of the last Mogul Em- 
peror, 451. 

Hokitika and the Buller — new gold 
fields of the colony, 238 ; nature 
of the voyage from Melbourne to 
Hokitika, 239 ; a fine sunrise, ib. ; 
the bar, 240; a "toss" for a 
newspaper, ib. ; the hotel, ib. ; 
English flowers among the dig- 
gers, ib. ; the diggings, 241 ; soil 
and climate of, ib. ; political eco- 
nomy on board the steamer, ib. ; 
rapid rise of Hokitika, 242 ; its 
excellent roads, ib. ; the product 
of convict labour, 243 ; the term 



582 



INDEX. 



"convict" made to include per- 
sons committed for the smallest 
offences, ib. ; bushrangers, ib. ; 
New Zealand Thugs, ib. ; a fa- 
vourite amusement at the diggings 
245 ; the new road from Hokiti- 
ka, 245 ; rivalry between the town 
and the religious settlements, 249. 

Homestead Act (United States), 
frauds on, 173. 

Hotel life in America, its effect on 
women and children, 179 ; pro- 
fligacy and assurance of Young 
America, 180. 

Hudson Bay Company, the blight of 
its monopoly, 49 — 51, impossibi- 
lity of the Company resisting 
American immigration, 51. 

Hunting party, a, lost, 75. 

Hydrabad (see India : — Scinde). 

India, spelling of native names, 

403- 

Benares, early morning in, 

427 ; the Hindoo as a babbler, 
zb. ; Temple of Sacred Monkeys, 
zb. ; Queen's College of native 
students, ib, ; observatory of Jai 
Singh, and the Golden Temple, 
428 ; streets of Benares, ib. ; 
banks of the Ganges, ib. ; scenery, 
ib. : ornamentation of pavilions, 
429 ; taste in painting, ib. ; peo- 
ple taken to the banks of the 
Ganges to die, ib. ; similar cus- 
toms among the Cinghalese and 
Maories, 430 ; immorality of the 
holy city, ib. ; conservatism of the 
Oriental mind, 431 ; fewness of 
Europeans in India, ib. ; a hot 
white fog, ib. ; demoralization of 
English soldiers, ib. ; brandy- 
and-soda-water, 432 ; Benares a 
type of India, ib. ; position of 
missionaries in, ib. 

Bombay, 531 ; vegetation, 



ib. ; harbour of, ib. ; weak de- 
fences of, ib. ; rapid rise of, owing 
to the cotton trade, 532 ; hard 
work in the mercantile houses, 
533 ; Scotchmen in Bombay, ib ; 
compensations of Bombay life, 
ib. ; the bazaar, 534 ; the Parsees, 
ib. ; their religion and culture, ib. ; 



the stage as a means of satirising 
English foibles, 535 ; a Parse'e 
marriage, 536 ; Caves of Ele- 
phanta, ib. ; bust of the Hindoo 
Trinity, ib. ; its gi'andeur, ib. 

India, Calcutta to Benares, &c., 
422 ; Chandernagore, ib. ; French 
possessions, ib. ; railway in Ori- 
ental dress, 423 ; Monghyr Hills, 
ib. ; the Ganges, first view of, 
424 ; scenery, ib. ; over the plains, 
ib. ; Patna, Oriental indepen- 
dence of railway time-tables, ib. ; 
taking tickets in good time, 425 ; 
working of the railways, ib. ; 
effect of railways on the state of 
the country, ib. ; on caste, ib. ; 
destruction of forests, ib. ; Mo- 
gul Serai, the junction for Benares, 
426. {see Benares). 

Colonization of, 464 ; at- 
tempts at, made in six districts, 
ib. ; Cashmere the best for Euro- 
pean settlers, 465 ; civilians and 
rulers of India jealous of settlers, 
ib. ; dread of "low caste" En- 
glishmen, 466 ; holding of landed 
estates by Englishmen in India, 
ib. ; English planters would assist 
to give a healthy tone to the 
social system, ib. ; indigo planta- 
tions in Bengal, 467 ; two securi- 
ties against the further degrada- 
tion of India, ib. 

English learning in, 543 ; 



ignorance of the people, ib. 
their high art a relic of a bygone 
age, ib. ; apparent rapid decline 
since the English arrived in India, 
544 ; humiliation of the ruling 
classes of the countiy, ib. • what 
should be the character of the 
government of such a people, 545 ; 
"India for the Indians," the 
meaning of the cry, ib. ; necessary 
radical reforms, 545, 546 ; trivial 
character of those introduced a 
few years ago, 546 ; importance 
of naturalizing the English lan- 
guage in India, ib. ; naturalization 
of the Spanish language in Ame- 
rica, ib. ; England's want of suc- 
cess in that particular, 547 ; early 
abolition of slavery probably one 



INDEX. 



583 



cause of it, ib. ; our system of 
government a dear one, id. ; ser- 
vile condition of native women, 
548 ; false swearing, id. ; small 
amount of money spent in en- 
couraging learning, id. 

India, England in the East different 
from the England at home, 550, 
551 ; trial by jury and law courts, 
551 ; the old school Hindoos and 
the free-thinkers both opposed to 
us, 552 ; superiority of Akbar's 
police, id ; employment of natives 
in higher offices, 553; aMohame- 
dan protest against our policy, id. ; 
levelling tendency of our compe- 
titive examinations, 554 ; hatred 
to English rule, the hatred that 
Easterns always have to their mas- 
ters, id. ; not a wish for self-govern- 
ment, 555 ; the Anglo-Saxon race 
in possession of the only homes of 
freedom known at the present 
time, id. ; freedom not understood 
by the Hindoos, id. ; conse- 
quences of our leaving India, 
556; prospects of our government 
there, id. ; Anglo-Indian opposi- 
tion to government from London, 
557 ; the creation of new govern- 
ments, 559 ; fundamental question 
whether we wish to hold India for 
our prestige merely, or in the in- 
terest of the people of Hindostan, 
560. 

• Gazette, 470 ; value and 

variety of contents of, 470 — 473 ; 
evidence with respect to "ghaut- 
murder," 473 ; evidence as to 
polyandry and polygyny, in India, 

474—477- 

Lahore, 487 ; appearance of 



id. ; suburb of tombs, id. ; Ca- 
bool Gate, 488 ; English charater- 
istics of Lahore, id. ; newspapers 
of, id. ; the rulers of Lahore, 490. 
Madras to Calcutta, 419 ; 



the Massullah boat, id. ; sighting 
the Temple of Juggernauth, 420 ; 
the Hoogly, id. ; scenery on, id. ; 
palace of the ex-King of Oude, 
id. ; extravagance and debauchery 
of the ex-King, id. ; apprehension 
of one of his wives for assisting 



in, id. ; general immorality of 
wealthy natives in Calcutta, 421 ; 
character of the Indian Govern- 
ment, and its influence on the 
popular life, id. ; Government 
House, and Calcutta buildings, 
id. ; hospitality of great mercan- 
tile houses, 421, 422 ; mixed 
population of Calcutta, 422. 

India, Mohamedan cities of, 444 ; 
Allahabad, id. ; Cawnpore, id. ; 
Lucknow, id. ; beauty of Luck- 
now, id. ; stores of the mutiny, 
445 ; ill-treatment of natives by 
the English, id. ; a notice in 
hotels, 446 ; Anglo-Indian jokes, 
id. ; looting, id. ; contempt for 
native lives, 447 ; officers and 
natives, id. English cruelties in 
Oude, 448 ; a war, not a rebellion 
in Oude, id. ; the Residency at 
Lucknow, id. ; rapid repair of 
the wrecks of the rebellion, id. ; 
Agra, id. ; the Taj Mahal and 
Pearl of Mosques, 449 ; Akbar's 
draught-board and pieces, id. ; 
great works of the Mogul con- 
querors, 450 ; contrast of Moha- 
medan great cities and those of 
the three Presidencies, id. ; changes 
in Delhi, 451. 

Mohamedan Mohurrun, 

celebrated at Poonah, 537 ; the 
ascent to Poonah, 537, 538 ; the 
procession, 538, 539 ; elegance 
and grace of the females of Poo- 
nah, 540 ; the procession joined 
in by the Hindoos and Christians 
as well as Mohamedans, id. ; 
drunken British soldiers, 541 ; 
Indian Mohamedans, their small 
number and Hindoo feelings, id. 
Native States, 506 ; need 



of irrigation in country, id. ; 
Moultan, 507 ; rail and river, 
id. ; State of Bhawulpore, 508 ; 
talk of annexation of, id. ; de- 
moralization, id. ; degeneracy of 
ruling families, 509 ; British or 
native rule, id. ; reasons for be- 
lieving that the people know they 
are well off" under British rule, 
510 ; merchants and towns' peo- 
ple our friends, id. ; danger of 



584 



INDEX. 



interfering with native customs, 
511 ; the Nepaulese during the 
mutiny, ib. ; the State of Cash- 
mere, ib. ; its creation as a State, 
ib. ; grounds for repurchase or 
annexation, 512 ; the Nizam, 
Scindia', the Guicowar of Baroda, 
and Holhar, ib. ; origin of present 
ruhng famihes, 513 ; effect of 
shutting out the natives from the 
higher branches of the English 
service, 514; present attitude of 
the natives one of indifference 
and neutrality, 515 ; the question 
of future annexation, ib. 

India, Our Army, 491 ; the Sikhs, 
ib. : questionable morality of the 
present system of, ib. ; Russia our 
only possible enemy from without, 
493 ; her weakness as against 
India, ib. ; taxation of the poor- 
est country in the world for so 
large an army, 494 ; our duty to 
reduce the army, ib. ; employ- 
ment of Sikhs out of India, ib. ; 
British officers, 495 ; danger to 
English liberties from so large an 
army in India, ib. 

Overland routes, 523 ; Kur- 

rachee, character of, 523 ; choke- 
dars, 524 ; a shibboleth for ex- 
cluding natives from the lines, 

524 ; the harbour of Kurrachee, 

525 ; Kurrachee the direct route 
from Bombay, by the Euphrates 
valley and Constantinople to 
London, 525 ; the earliest known 
overland route, 525 ; interest of a 
return of trade to the Gulf route, 
526 ; difficulties in the way of, 
527 — 529 ; Scinde chieftains, 530. 

Russian approach to, 496 ; 



at Bokhara, ib. ; advice from dif- 
ferent quarters as to the best means 
for dealing with, 497 ; opinion of 
a Syrian Pacha as to England's 
proper course and interest in op- 
position to Russia, 498 — 500 ; his 
view of our relation to Turkey 
and Egypt, 499, 500 ; differences 
of Moslem races, 501 ; opinion of 
old Indians that Indian policy 
should rule the policy of the na- 
tion, 502 ; advance of Russia 



watched by the natives, ib ; ad-' 
vantages to India of English go- 
vernment, if we can raise up a 
people that will support our rule, 

503- 

India, Simla, 452 ; a night ride up 
the hills to, ib. ; languages of 
India, 453 ; dawk travelling, 454 ; 
villages on the way, ib. ; aristocracy 
of colour, 455 ; English haughti- 
ness, ib. ; Indian plains, ib. ; ruins, 
ib. ; wheat harvest, 456 ; female 
reapers, ib. ; jampan riding, ib. ; 
sei'vants, unpleasant number of, 
ib. ; thirty -five required for one 
small family in Simla, 457 ; cheap- 
ness of labour, 458 ; English 
soldiers, the possibility of keeping 
all at hill stations, 459 ; story- 
telling in the East, ib. ; entry to 
Simla, 460; the Viceroy's chil- 
dren, ib. ; climate, 461 ; suitability 
of Simla as a refuge of the Indian 
Government from Calcutta heat, 
ib. ; the question of new ' ' Go- 
vernorships, " 462 ; Calcutta, dis- 
advantages of, as capital, ib. ; 
future capital of India, 463 ; a 
sunrise scene from Simla, ib. ; a 
fair at Simla, 468. 

Scinde, 516; the Indus valley 

a part of the great Sahara, 517 ; 
sailing on the Indus, 517, 518; a 
Persian's prayer on shipboard, 
519 ; shallowness of the river, ib. ; 
necessity of a safe and speedy roa d 
up the valley, ib. ; neglect of rail- 
ways in India, 520 ; need and 
value of them, ib. ; early trade be- 
tween China and Hindostan, 521 ; 
Sukkur, ib. ; native fishing, ib. ; 
Hydrabad, 522 ; Kurrachee, ib. ; 
{see Overland Routes). 

Umritsur, 478 ; Hindoo sa- 



cred fair, or camp meeting, ib. ; 
Sikh pilgrims on the way from, 
ib. ; cholera stricken, 479 ; a fear- 
ful march, ib. ; nature of the great 
gathering, ib. ; a dust storm, 480 ; 
Anglo-Indian engineering, ib. ; 
neglect of roads, 481 ; the Grand 
Trunk Railway, ib. ; Umritsur, 
beauty of, 482 ; fruits, foliage, 
&c , ib. ; its famous roses, ib. ; 



INDEX. 



585 



the attar of roses, ib. ; Cashmere 
shawl manufacture, ib. ; cost of, 
ib. ; material, 483 ; the bazaar, ib. ; 
the Sikhs, Magyar appearance of, 
ib. ; Indian and English manufac- 
tures, 484 ; ornament, Hindoo 
taste with respect to, ib. ; the 
spiritual capital of the Sikhs, 485 ; 
a Sikh revival, 486 ; its possible 
consequences, ib. 

India, East, trunk railway of, 68. 

Indian customs {see Caste). 

Seas, the, 403, 404. 

Indians of the American Plains, 75 ; 
stations robbed by, ib. ; a formal 
Indian warning to the white men, 
76 ; a half-breed interpreter, ib. ; 
treaties with the, 76, 77 ; opposi- 
tion of, to the Pacific Railway, 77; 
the chief, "Spotted Dog," ib. ; 
treatment of squaws, 81 ; and 
general unseemliness, ib. ; coming 
to town to be painted, 83 ; infe- 
riority to the Indians of the Eastern 
States, ib. ; customs similar to 
those of the Maories, 84 ; degra- 
dation of the Indian, ib. ; rapid 
extermination of, 85 ; tendency 
when apparently civilized to return 
to barbarism, 86 ; rough-and-ready 
attempts by the English to civilize, 
ib. ; conservative character of the 
Indian, 87 ; American treaty with, 
ib. ; the Indian receding before 
the English race, but victorious 
over the Spaniards, 88 ; open at- 
tempts to exterminate, by the Co- 
loradan Government, ib. ; gangs 
of Indians working by proxy on 
the railway, 153 ; Digger Indians, 
154; Red Indian supremacy in 
Mexico, 202. 

Irish in America, competition with 
the negro, 16 ; in New York, 
displacing the New Englanders, 
29 — 31 ; danger to America, 31 ; 
corruption of, in New York, 32 ; 
possibility of their retaining their 
hold of the Atlantic cities, 199 {see 
Fenian Brothers) ; Irishmen not 
well off in America, 216 ; Belfast 
names in higher esteem than Cork 
ones, ib. ; the Irish remaining in 
towns, and losing their attachment 



to the soil, ib. ; number of, sent to 
gaol in America, 216 ; an Irish 
opinion of the thermometer, 316 ; 
Irish party in office in Victoria, 
323 ; appointment of Irishmen to 
all police offices, ib. ; checks on 
Irish immigration to the colonies, 
340 — 343 ; workhouse girls sent 
to the colonies, 372, 373. 

Jaffa, colony founded -there by New 

Englanders, 44. 
Jamaica, homilies on the condition 

of, by Southern planters, 18. 
Japan, its probable great future, 287, 

288. 
Jenny Lind, the hall where she sang 

on first landing in America, 29. 
Jockey Club, Sydney, meeting of 

{see Sydney). 
Johnson, President, absurdity of his 

policy, 26. 

Kandy (Ceylon), the highland king- 
dom, and one of the holiest of 
Buddhist towns, 413 ; dress and 
appearance of the people, ib. ; the 
Upper Town one great garden, ib. ; 
tooth of Buddha, ib. ; the coffee 
district, 414 ; Government Botani- 
cal Gardens — medicinal plants, ib. ; 
importance of the coffee-trade to 
Ceylon, ib. ; want of capital in, ib. ; 
Dutch system of labour, 415 ; in 
Java, ib. ; Dutch Government 
jobbery, ib. ; immorality of, 416 ; 
Ceylon petitions for self-govern- 
ment, 417 ; small number of whites 
in the country, 418 ; mountain 
scenery, ib ; trees and foliage, ib. 

Kansas, emancipation of women in, 
&c., 58, 63 ; parallel lines of 
railway in, 68 ; Nebraska opinion 
of Kansas, 69 ; female suffrage in, 
the opposite pole to Utah poly- 
gamy, 106 ; evasion of the Home- 
stead Act in, 173. 

Kimball, Heber, Mormon, 108. 

King George's Sound {see Convicts). 

Kit Carson, 144. 

Kurrachee {see India : — Overland 
Route). 

Labour in Australia, 339 ; great 



586 



INDEX, 



power of working men in Australia 
as compared with, in the United 
States, lb. ; tlie real grievance of 
the working-classes throughout 
the world, ib. ; laws by workmen 
in the colonies, and in those parts 
of America where they have power, 
to meet the want, 339 ; opposition 
of the Sydney workmen to both 
immigration and transportation, 
340 ; defence of the labour laws, 
340—342 ; English Factory Act, 
a step which diminished the 
powers of production, 342 ; Know- 
nothingism in America, a protest 
against the exaggerations of free 
trade, 342 ; proposals to introduce 
cheap labour, 343 ; the funda- 
mental basis of the labour question, 
ib. ; our recent ridicule of the 
Chinese exclusiveness, 344 ; our 
present opposition to Chinese im- 
migration, ib. ; the Chinese push- 
ing to the front whenever they 
have an opportunity, 344, 345 ; 
the colonial labour laws not un- 
like those of a trade union, 345 ; 
the old relation between master 
and servant dying out, ib. ; new 
aspect of labour in accordance 
with democratic principles, 346 ; 
co-operative labour supplanting 
the middle-age system, ib. ; in- 
dustrial partnerships a return to 
the earliest and noblest forms of 
labour, ib. 

Lahore {see India : — Lahore), 

Land tenure in Australia {see Squat- 
ters and Democracy). 

Latin Church, the, in America, 31. 

Empire in America, 201 ; its 

virtual downfall, ib. 

Latinization, the apparent, of the 
English in America, 223. 

Launceston {see Tasmania). 

Lawrence, St., the, 46 ; Lawrentian 
range of mountains, ib. 

Louisiana, banana in, 20. 

Lucknow {see India : Mohamedan 

Cities), 
Lynch Law, where inaugurated, 
154; vigilance committees, 163; 
great need for, in California, in 
1848, ib. ; influx of English con- 



victs and desperadoes from all 
parts, 164 ; first attempted action 
on the part of the people for their 
own protection, ib. ; united at- 
tempt, 165 ; trial by lynch law, 
165, 166 ; vigilance committee 
formed, ib. ; its regular organiza- 
tion and prompt action, ib. ; 
police show of resistance to, ib. ; 
but warned away, ib. ; the trial, 
167 ; and execution, ib. ; full 
public account of the circum- 
stances, ib. ; trial and execution 
endorsed by the citizens in public 
meeting, ib. ; struggle with au- 
thority — the committee victorious, 
168 ; sending the convicts back 
to Australia, ib. ; a fearful year 
(1855), ib. ; resolute action of the 
people, 169, 170; end of the work, 
ib. ; necessity for the action, ib. ; 
somewhat different action in Mel- 
bourne for the same purpose, ib. ; 
public spirit of the people, 171 ; 
descendants of the justice-loving 
Germans, ib. ; two memorable 
Lynch-law trees, 1 74 ; vigilance 
committees in Denver, Leaven- 
worth, &c., 174, 175, 

Maine Liquor Law, likelihood of 
being the first cause of the re- 
action against the now trmmphant 
Radicals, 209. 

Malthusianism rejected in America, 
89. 

Maori {see Race) : — Question of 
Maories being natives of the New 
Zealand soil, 251 ; legend of their 
flight to New Zealand, ib. ; Poly- 
nesian names in their language, 
252 ; traditional account of the 
cradle of race, ib. ; resemblance 
between, and the Red Indians of 
America, 252, 253 ; similarity of 
religious rites and social customs 
of, 254 ; the Malay race in the 
Pacific, ib. ; the most widely 
scattered of all the nations of the 
world before the English, 255 j 
the Maories, Malays, ib. ; Malay 
breach of a law of nature in going 
to New Zealand, ib. ; paying the 
penalty in extinction, ib. ; Pare- 



INDEX, 



587 



wanui Pah, 256 ; a Maori song, 
ib. ; meeting of the tribes to dis- 
cuss with the white man a great 
question of the right to territory, 
257 ; curious idea of the Maories 
as to the title of land, ib. ; a 
summons to the council, 258 ; 
vigorous speeches of the chiefs, 
258, 259 ; the representative of 
the Queen (Dr. Featherston) com- 
municating with the chiefs, 260 ; 
adjournment for luncheon, ib. ; 
the Maori belles, 261 ; views of 
the chiefs with respect to Dr. 
Featherston's decision, ib. ; busi- 
ness of the Council resumed, ib. ; 
oratorical abuse, 262 ; breaking- 
up of the Council, 263 ; its 
singular resemblance to the Greek 
Council as described by Homer, 
ib. ; alarming news of guns being 
sent for, 264 ; another general 
meeting of the tribes, ib. ; Maori 
names, ib. ; the Queen's flag 
pulled down, ib. ; Dr. Feather- 
ston's refusal to attend any debate 
till the flag is re-hoisted, ib. ; an 
interesting voyage in an English 
ship for cannibal purposes, 265 ; 
the captain's compensation for the 
use of his ship, ib. ; Maori dance 
song, ib. ; sketching the Maories, 

266 ; native tombs, ib. ; apology 
for the pulling down of the flag, 

267 ; the deed of land sale, ib. ; 
" eternal friendship between " the 
tribes, ib. ; the moiiey sent for by 
Dr. Featherston, ib. ; misgivings 
andgrief of the Maories, ib. ; their 
song of lamentation, ib. ; the 
money paid, 268 ; grand cele- 
bration, 268 — 270 ; effect of a 
war-dance on Lord Durham's 
settlers (in 1837), 270; specimens 
of native oratory — noble speech 
of the chief Hunia, 270 — 272 ; a 
long ramble in New Zealand, 273 ; 
Maori Christianity, its hollo w- 
ness, 274 ; baptized otd of the 
Church, ib. ; their Church of 
Englandism a failure, ib. ; in 
spite of the earnestness and devo- 
tion of missionaries, ib. ; the great 
outbreak, ib. ; deserting the mis- 



sion-station for the bush, ib. ; a 
question— pork, beef, or man for 
food, 275 ; the Maori reply, ib. ; 
rapid spread of Christianity among, 
when first presented, ib. ; the 
native religion a vague Polytheism, 
ib. ; no caste among the Maories, 
276 ; reverence for high-born 
women, ib. ; influence of women, 
ib. ; delicacy of the men towards, 
ib. ; making it possible for an 
honest Englishman to respect or 
love an honest Maori, 277 ; Maori 
superiority to other native races 
in savage lands, 277, 278 ; noble 
Maori trait of "proclaiming" a 
war district, and never touching 
an enemy, however defenceless, 
when found elsewhere, 278 ; royal 
ideas of money, ib. (see Thomp- 
son, William, the Maori King- 
maker) ; Maori ability in war, 
ib. ; their fondness for horses and 
skill as riders, 279 ; their love for 
the sea, and possession of vessels 
on it, ib. ; good deep-sea fisher- 
men, ib. ; and draught-players, 
ib. ; shrewd and thrifty, devoted 
friends and brave men, ib. ; a 
Maori feast and bill -of- fare. Ap- 
pendix, 574; their saying, "We 
are gone like the moa" [see Flies, 
the two) ; customs of, 430. 

Massachusetts, progress of, 43. 

Maximilian, received in Mexico by 
white men, and conquered by 
half-breeds, 202. 

Mayflower', and the Pilgrim Fathers, 
24 — 29. 

Mayhew, Hon. Ira, work on Edu- 
cation, 62. 

Mean whites, 6 ; controlling power 
of the South, 24. 

Melbourne [see Victoria), learned 
and distinguished men at, 325 ; 
the Attorney-General, Mr. Hig- 
ginbotham, ib. ; a Government 
clerk's horror of the low pedigree 
of three ministers of state, ib. ; a 
Colonial Parliament on its dignity, 
committal of a reporter, ib. ; his 
triumph, ib. ; early competition 
of Melbourne and Geelong, 350 ; 
voyage from Melbourne to Hoki- 



588 



INDEX, 



tika, ib, ; the great gold mania 
in 1848, ib. 

Mexican saddle, peculiarity of, 184. 

Mexico, coasting to, 200 ; Cape St. 
Lucas, ib. ; turtle and crocodile, 
ib. ; French army of occupation, 
201 ; Acapulco, ib. ; anniversary 
of Marshal Bazaine's order direct- 
ing the execution of all Mexicans 
found with arms, ib. ; Spanish 
Mexico becoming Red Indian, 
202 ; resolution of the United 
States that Mexico shall not be- 
come a monarchy, 203 ; the large 
Catholic population it would give 
in case of annexation to the Ame- 
rican Union, ib. ; beauty of the 
Mexican Pacific coast, 204. 

Michigan {see Massachusetts), Uni- 
versity of, 57 ; Michigan men and 
maize, ib. ; democracy of the 
University, 58 ; Government of, 
59 ; progress of the Michigan 
teaching system, ib. ; supported 
by the taxpayers of the State, ib. ; 
jocose reports of superintendents 
of schools, 60; loyalty, 61 ; 
students sent to the war, ib. ; dis- 
like to competitive honours, ib. ; 
practical character of, 62 ; ex- 
clusion of women from the medical 
schools, 63 ; the coasls of Michi- 
gan great lakes, 67. 

'* Mint Juleps " in San Francisco — 
the old name of the town, , Yerba 
Buena, meaning mint, 179. 

Miscegenation, French adoption of, 
English dislike to, 85. 

Mission Dolores, near San Fran- 
cisco, once a Jesuit Mission-house, 
now partly a blanket factory and 
partly a church, 176, 177. 

Missouri, law for the punishment of 
drunkards, &c., 243. 

Mohamedans {see India :— Moha- 
medan Mohurrum, a7id India : — 
Mohamedan Cities). 

Mohurrum {see India). 

Monitors, American, 7. 

Monroe Doctrine, dignified action 
of America thereon, 204. 

Monroe, Fort, 3 ; negroes at, ib. ; 
their tomb at, 13. 

Montreal {see Canada), 50. 



Mormons, 95 ; a camp on the way 
to Utah, 97 ; Coalville, the Mor- 
mon Newcastle, 98 ; first sight of 
the Promised Land, ib. ; Jordan 
river, ib. ; one great field of corn 
and wheat, 98 {see Brigham 
Young) ; a lady reading to her 
daughters in defence of polygamy, 
99 ; first night in Utah, 100 ; arms 
at hand, ib. ; interest of the 
Church paramount, 102 ; the 
Mormon constitution, ib. ; penalty 
for adultery, 103 ; kind treat- 
ment by the Mormons, 104 ; the 
representative of Utah in Con- 
gress a Monogamist, ib. ; anecdote 
of, 105 ; a Mormon theatre, ib. ; 
the women, ib. ; unconscious 
melancholy of, ib. ; their perfect 
freedom, and opportunity of es- 
caping if they wished to do so, 
ib. ; defence of polygamy, 106 ; 
Utah polygamy and Kansas female 
suffrage the opposite poles to each 
other, ib. {see Western Editors, 
Newspapers, Stenhouse, a/^d Dan- 
ites) ; misrepresentation of, 107 ; 
theatre and church clothes, 108 ; 
industry, 1 10, ill — Ii6;natm-al 
poorness of the country, 116; 
Mormon faith, 118; their belief 
in approaching danger from United 
States' interference, ib. ; detested 
by New England and defended by 
the South, evade the law, 119^ 
democratic character of Mor- 
monism, 122 {see Utah) ; vitality 
of Mormonism, 123 ; danger to it 
from the probable dsscovery of 
gold in Utah 124; impossibility 
of its surviving a great immigra- 
tion, ib. ; they would in that case 
again make their way to new ter- 
ritory, ib. {see Nauvoo). 

Moultan {see India : — Native States). 

Nauvoo, the city of Joe Smith, 
226 ; first settlers of, forgotten 
there, ib. 

Nebraska, 69. 

Negroes, gallantry of, ii ; burial- 
place of 5000 killed in battle, ib. ; 
our English notions of, near the 
truth, 14 ; love of dress, ib. ; plan- 



INDEX. 



589 



ters' view of freedom of, ib. ; re- 
ported negro view of monogamy, 
ib. ; need of soap, 15 ; importance 
of the " negi-o question," ib. ; 
fallacious evidence against negroes, 
ib. ; driving the Irish from hotel 
service, 16 ; asking for land, ib. ; 
tlieir position as slaves, ib. ; and 
as free men, ib. ; testimony of 
General Grant to their excellence 
as soldiers, 17 ; a negro school, 
ib. ; negro ability, ib. ; supersti- 
tion, ib. ; alternative of ruling 
them by their own votes or by 
force, 20 ; reading and writing 
bases of suffrage absurd, 21 ; co- 
operative labour [sec Davis) ; the 
ballot for, 25. 

Nepaulese, the {see India : — Native 
States). 

Nevada, its silver mines, 142. 

New Englanders, going westward, 
29 ; in North or West the real 
Americans, 34 ; their affection for 
Harvard College, 40 ; earnest God- 
fearing principles, 43 ; influence 
of, on the nation, ib. ; their lov- 
able charactei", 45 ; dislike to Mor- 
monism, 119; determination to 
put down rov/dyism wherever they 
go, 174; wide-spread belief of, 
that the taint of alcoholic poison 
is hereditary, 209. 

New England States, their superi- 
ority to the States of the South, 9 
(see Southern States, Western 
States, a7id Mayflower) ; colleges 
of, 33 ; population of, 43 ; debt 
of the Union to New England, 44; 
heroism of New England, ib. ; 
poverty of the soil, ib. ; enterprise, 
&c., 45. 

New South Wales, convict blood in, 
295 {see Rival Colonies) ; terrible 
depression of trade in, at present, 
297 ; causes of, ib. ; reptiles in, 
302 {see Tasmania). 

New York, climate of, 28 ; strength 
of the NarroAvs, ib. ; un-English 
character, ib. ; sea spirit and busy 
life, ib. ; race. Southern, ib. ; no- 
thing of the Dutch foundation 
remaining, 29 ; intensely Irish, 30, 
31 ; loAv tone of local legislature, 



32 ; denationalization of, ib. ; neg- 
lect of native colleges and prefer- 
ence for foreign ones, 33 ; gigantic 
fortunes in, ib. ; profligacy, petro- 
leum, shoddy, and unrest, ib. ; 
equality and affected dislike of 
democracy, 34 ; scenery of, ib. ; 
democracy of, 213. 

New Zealand {see Wellington, Hoki- 
tika, and Maori) : — University 
graduates and officers of the Bri- 
tish army at the diggings, 244, 
245 ; beauty and peculiarity of 
New Zealand scenery, 246 ; the 
Taramakoo, ib. ; the Snowy 
Range, ib. ; Mount Rollestcn, 
247 ; Lake misery, ib. ; plant 
peculiar to the banks of, ib. ; the 
Waimmokiriri Valley, ib. ; New 
Zealand provinces, ib. ; rivalry of, 
ib. ; {see Otago and Canterbury) ; 
cost of the Provincial system and 
Maori wars, 248 ; consequences 
of the division into two islands, 
249 ; rivalry of the great towns, 
ib. ; Karaka trees, the New Zea- 
land sacred trees, 256 ; {see R£,C2 
and Maories) ; New Zealand 
scenery, 273 {see Flies, the two) ; 
its chance of being the future Eng- 
land of the Pacific, 287 {see also 
Rival Colonies). 

Newspapers : — Neiv Orleans Tri- 
bune (negro paper), 22 ; British 
Colnmbian, 51 ; the Salt Lake 
Telegraph, 102; the Unio7t Vedette 
(Utah), 107 ; contents of the 
Vedette, 108, 109 ; the great supe- 
riority of, to the Mormon papers, 
the Telegraph and Deseret N'ews, 
109 — 112; the Denver Gazette, 
&c., 112 — 114; the California 
Alta, and journalism under diffi- 
culties, 115; Nevada Union Ga- 
zette, 140; the Francisco Bulletin, 
169 ; the Spiritual Clarion, 228 ; 
Sydney Morning Herald, agents 
of, intercepting the mail boat, 294 ; 
the AlelboiLrne Argus, 309 ; the 
Riverina Herald, 313 ; advertise- 
ments, paragraphs, &c. of, 313 — 
315 ; commital of an editor of the 
Melbo2ir7ie Argus, 326; news- 
papers in India, 438 ; native satire 



590 ^ 



INDEX. 



of the English in, ib. ; the Umrit- 
sur Co7?zmercial Advei'tiser, ib.-; 
{see India Gazette) the Dacca Pro- 
kash, 473 ; Indian newspapers, 
488,489; thQ Fimjaub Gazette, 489. 

Niagara and Chaudiere, 56. 

Nitro-glycerine, dread of, in CaHfor- 
nia, 182, 183. 

Norfolk, second city in Virginia, 4. 

North (America), superiority of its 
arms during the war, 23. 

North and South in America, the 
unvarying success of the former in 
any trial of strength, 66, 67, 

Norwegian population in Wisconsin, 
225 ; Milwaukee a Norwegian 
town, ib. ; Canadian plan for a 
Norwegian colony on Lake Huron, 
226. 

Ohio, beauty of scenery and wealth 
of soil, 57. 

Otago (New Zealand), Presbyterian 
settlement, 247, 248. 

Ottawa, capital of the New Domi- 
nion, 55 ; its Parliament house, 
56 ; the Chaudiere Falls, ib. 

Pacific, the, voyage across, from 
Panama to New Zealand, 234 [see 
Pitcairn Island) ; from Pitcairn 
Island, 237 ; climate of, 285 ; un- 
favourable to the progress of New 
Zealand, ib. ; effect of like causes 
elsewhere, 286 ; coal in the, ib. ; 
Japan, Vancouver Island, and 
New Zealand, likely to rise to 
manufacturing greatness, 287 ; 
Christmas-day on, 291. 

Pacific Railroad, growing at the rate 
of two miles a day at one end and 
one mile at the other, 64 ; pro- 
bable completioii of it in 1870, ib. ; 
inducements to proceed quickly 
with the work, ib. ; rapid and 
steady progress westward, 65 ; 
armed construction trains, ib. ; the 
great objects of the undertaking, 
66 ; Indian opposition to the, 77. 

Panama, character of, 233 ; animals 
and birds of, ib. ; scene at a rail- 
way station, ib. ; prospects of 
Panama, 234 ; departure from, 
for Wellington, New Zealand, ib. 



Paper money in the Western States 
of America, 141, 142, 

Parewanui Pah {see Maori), 

Parsees {see India : — Bombay). 

Party organization, despotism of, in 
America, 210 ; secret of party 
power, 211. 

Pawnees, 80. 

Petersburg, America, as left by the 
war, 8, 9 ; defences of, lo. 

Pioneer, a great, 80. 

Pioneering in America, 69 ; on the 
Plains, 75. 

Pitcairn Island, the banana-tree 
there, 37 ; arrival at, 235 ; 
visited by the people, ib. ; " How 
do you do, captain ? How's Vic- 
toria ?" ib. ; descendants of the 
Bounty mutineers, ib. ; wish to 
submit to the captain a case for 
arbitration, ib. ; the case stated 
for " advice," ib. ; its curious legal 
bearing, 236 ; a temporary com- 
mercial treaty with the islanders, 
ib. ; inquiry for English periodicals, 
ib. ; brandy as medicine, ib. ; the 
Islanders strict teetotallers, ib. ; 
standing out from the bay, 237. 

Pittsburg, dirt of, 57. 

Placerville, in California, 153 — 158, 
162. 

Plains, the, out on, 74 ; a " squar' 
meal, ib. ; weird scene, 75 ; great 
distance of forts from each other, 
76 ; sitting revolver in hand, 77 ; 
a million companions in the lone- 
liness, 78 ; beauty of, 89 ; resem- 
blance to the Tartar Plains, ib. ; 
vast extent, 90 ; two curses on 
the land — want of water, 90, 91 ; 
and locusts, 91, 92 ; feeding ground 
for large flocks, 92. 

Planter view of negro freedom, 14 ; 
effect of slavery on both master 
and slave, 18; planters leaving 
the South, 25. 

Plutocracy in Australia 317 {see 
Squatter). 

Point de Galle {see Maritime Ceylon). 

Polygamy in India, 474 ; poly, 
andry, 475 ; polygyny, 475—477. 

Polynesians, Malay origin of, 251 — 
255 {see Race and Maori) ; rapid 
spread of Christianity among, 



ISDEX. 



591 



275 ; the Maori religion common 
to all Polynesians, i^. ; a vague 
Polytheism in the songs, seeming 
to approach Pantheism, ib. ; differ- 
ence between the Maories and 
other Polynesians, 276. 

Poonah (jc'^the ]Mohamedan Mohur- 
rum). 

Potomac, 27.- 

Prairie dogs, for food, 76 ; on the 
Plains, 77. 

Prairie flowers, 81. 

Protection to native industry in the 
colonies, 331 ; the squatters alone 
in favour of free trade, ib. ; de- 
fence of protection by the diggers, 
ib. ; its self-denying character, 332 ; 
defended on different grounds in 
Australia and America, 333 ; 
grandeur of the willingness to 
sacrifice private interest that a 
nation may be built up, 334 ; pro- 
tection to a great degree a revolt 
against steam, ib. ; American de- 
fence of, as a necessity to a young 
nation, 335 ; and as a security 
against the pauper labour of 
Europe, ib. ; ' ' No America with- • 
out protection," 336 ; eagerness 
for, in Victoria, 337 ; American 
admission of the economical argu- 
ment, but assertion that political 
objections overweigh it, 338 ; pro- 
tection not the doctrine of a clique 
but a nation, ib. 

Pyramids, the, 566. 

Quebec, terrace at, 46 ; change of 
scene from the States, ib. ; strength 
of the French population, 46, 47 ; 
customs and feelings of old France, 
47 ; the only true French colony 
in the world, guarded by English 
troops against the inroads of the 
English race, 48 ; contrast with 
English energy, ib. ; climate of 
Quebec, ib. ; Northern Lights, 
49 ; the oppressive monopoly of 
the Hudson Bay Company, ib. 

Queensland [see Rival Colonies and 
Squatters) ; question of the culti- 
vation of a tropical country not 
yet settled, 299 ; little hope of the 
coloured races being received on 



equal terms of citizenship, 300 ; 
physical condition of the colonists 
on the Downs and in Brisliane, 
304 ; population of (from i860 to 
1866), 343. 

Race, war of, in America, 223; 
in New Zealand, ib. ; in Mexico, 
223, 224 ; disappearance of phy- 
sical type, ib. [see Saxon and 
Latin Races) ; gi-adual destruction 
of races, the bearing of, on reli- 
gion, 226 {see English Race) ; 
probable opposition of the Vic- 
torians to the Queensland colo- 
nists availing themselves of the 
labour of the dark-skinned races, 
299 ; unfairness of the planters to 
the dark-skins, 300 ; danger of 
peonage, ib. 

Rail and river, 68 ; railways in 
America preceding population, 
ib. ; converging lines and parallel 
lines, 68, 71. 

Ranchmen, cooks, and ostlers, 132 ; 
their roughness, ib. ; dislike to 
" biled shirts," 133. 

Red Lidians [see Indians). 

Represe itation in the Northern and 
Southern States, 21. 

Reptiles, in New South Wales, 302 ; 
Tasmania, 363 ; a snake story, ib. 

Republican party in the United 
States, complete organization and 
great power of, 212. 

Rhode Island, smallness of territory 
and population, 43. 

Richmond, 8 ; defences of, 10 ; fu- 
ture prospects of, 12 ; Washing- 
ton's statue in, ib. ; Holly^vood 
Cemetery, 13. 

Riley, Fort, the centre of the United 
States, 72. 

Rival colonies and towns — Australia 
and New Zealand, 292 ; New 
Zealand hitherto mainly aristo- 
cratic. New South Wales and 
Victoria democratic, ib. ; sepa- 
ration of New^ Zealand and Aus- 
tralia by a wide ocean, ib. ; New 
Zealand presenting to Australia a 
rugged coast, while her ports and 
boys are turned towards America 
and Polynesia, 293 ; difference 



592 



INDEX. 



of climate, ib. ; energy of the 
Australians as compared with the 
supineness of the New Zealanders, 
294 ; different appearance of the 
t people in the two colonies, 295 ; 
New South Wales, Queensland, 
Victoria, 297 ; probable wide 
political differences in the future, 
298 {see Squatters) ; Sydney and 
Melbourne, 304 ; rivalry of, 307 ; 
seasons in New Zealand and Aus- 
tralia, 315, 316; climate, ib. ; 
the question of confederation of 
the Pacific colonies, 360 ; willing- 
ness of the colonies for free-trade 
with each other, 365 ; postal and 
customs union, ib. ; difficulties in 
the way of confederation, ib. ; 
choice of future capital, ib. ; de- 
sirability of selecting some obscure 
village and not a great town, ib. ; 
the bearing of confederation on 
imperial interests, 366 ; and on 
colonial ones, ib. ; our duty in 
case it should lead to indepen- 
dence, ib. 

Riverina, the {see Yictov'm and 'N ews- 
papers). 

Rockwell Porter, 126 ; death of 
Captain Gunnison, of the Federal 
Engineers, near Rockwell's house, 

Rocky Mountains, 64 ; sublime view 
of, from Denver, 82 ; Black 
Mountains, 93 ; the Wind River 
Chain, &c. ib., ; dreaded alkali 
dust of the desert, 94 ; a fine 
scene, 95 ; the Elk Mountains, 
96 ; game, &c. , ib. ; Rocky 
Mountain plateau, ib. ; solitude 
of, ib. ; sudden arrival by night at 
a Mormon camp, 97 ; a Mormon 
welcome, ib. ; Echo Canyon, ib. 

Rowdyism in the West, put down 
by the God-fearing New Eng- 
landers, 174. 

Russia {see India: — Russian ap- 
proach to). 

Sacramento, 163 ; the Sacra- 
mento river, ib. 

San Francisco and Chicago, the 
cosmopolitanism of, compared, 
227. 



San Francisco, its future connexion 
with Europe by means of the 
Pacific Railway, 66, 67 {see 
Golden City) ; its claim to be 
one of the chief stations of the 
Anglo-Saxon highway round the 
world, 193 ; remarks on its pro- 
bable future, 194 — 198. 

San Jose, the Garden City, 183. 

Sandhurst, 309 ; aspect and charac- 
ter of the town, 310 ; the "Go- 
vernment Reserve," ib.; Chinese 
clerks and diggers , ib. ; unjust 
treatment of, 311. 

Sandridge {see Victorian Ports). 

Saxon and Latin races in America 
{see Western States), sharp con- 
flict between, 1 76. 

Saxon, the, the only extirpating race 
on earth, 223. 

Scinde {see India). 

Scotch, the, 121 {see also India, 
Bombay). 

Servants, in India, 456, 457. 

Sierra Nevada, 145 ; its grim aspect, 
ib. ; and obstacles to travelling 
westward, 145, 146, 149. 

Sikhs {see India ; — Umritsur). 

Simla {see India). 

Slavery, effects of, 18 ; a slaver, 45. 

South Australia, 370, 371. 

Southern States, planters of, for- 
merly rulers of America, 6 ; dis- 
union of society, during the war, 
23 ; hatred to the New England 
States, 24, 26. 

South America, society of, disor- 
ganized, 15 ; injurious effect on, 
of the banana tree growing wild, 
and offering food without labour, 
19, 20. 

Sphinx, the, 566. 

Spiritualism {see Churches in Ame- 
rica). 

Squatters, the, tenants of the Crown 
land in Queensland, 298 ; struggle 
in Victoria between, and the agri- 
cultural democracy, ib. ; the mo- 
nopolization of land discouraged 
by the democracy, 307 ; the 
Squatter Aristocracy, 318; mean- 
ing of the term, ib. ; the squatter 
the nabob of ^Sydney and Mel- 
bourne, ib. ; squatter complaints. 



INDEX, 



593 



ib, ; what the townsmen think of, 
ib. ; evils of the squatter system, 
319 ; almost entire appropriation 
of the lands in Victoria, ib. ; 
colonial Democracy, perception 
by, of the dangers of the land 
monopoly, ib. ; popular move- 
ment for the nationalization of 
land, ib. ; Radical legislation 
against land monopoly, ib. ; the 
squatter denunciation of, 320 ; his 
right to impound cattle, ib. ; in- 
terest of Victoria in putting down 
the monopoly, 321. 

Stenhouse, Elder, the Mormon, 100; 
his answer to the question, ' ' Has 
Brigham's election ever been op- 
posed?" loi ; postmaster, 107; 
denounced by the Vedette news- 
paper, ib. ; editor of the Telegraph, 
108 ; dislike to jokes, ib. ; Arte- 
mus Ward's joke to, ib. ; Sten- 
house's opinion of Mormon and 
Welsh coal, 117; his rebuke of 
the Author, 118. 

Suffrage, negro, reading and writing 
basis for, 21. 

Sukkur {see India : — Scinde). 

Sydney, 291 ; arrival off the 
"Heads," 294; Sydney Cove, 
ib. ; appearance of the town, ib. ; 
the Midsummer Meeting of the 
Sydney Jockey Club on New 
Year's Day, ib. ; appearance of 
the ladies on the Grand Stand, 
295 ; the young people, ib, ; no 
trace of convict blood in the faces 
on the race-course, ib. ; the last 
of the bushrangers, 296 ; English 
fruits, foliage, &c., ib. ; heat, 
succeeded by a gale, ib. ; wealth 
in coal, 301 ; the City of Pleasure, 
ib. ; tendency of the colonists to 
rush to towns to spend their 
money, 302 {see Rival Colonies) ; 
opposition of the operative classes 
of, to immigration and transpor- 
tation, 340 ; University of, 390. 

Taj Mahal {see India : — Mohame- 
dan Cities — Agra). 

Tasmania, pleasant climate of, 353 ; 
English scenery, ib. ; and homes, 
&c., ib. ; Maria Van Diem en's 



Land, ib. ; the Tamar river, ib. ; 
Launceston, ib. ; southward to 
Hobarton, ib. ; deserted and dis- 
heartening state of the country, 
354 ; bountifulness of nature, ib. ; 
great number of naturalized fruits, 
&c., ib. ; the Ireland of the South, 
ib. ; the almost abandoned harbour 
of Hobarton, ib. ; blight of the 
convict settlement, ib. ; total ex- 
tirpation of the aborigines, 357 ; 
slight increase of population in 
the colony, ib. ; iron and coal 
abundant, but seldom worked, 
358 ; consumption of spirits in, 
ib. ; lotus-eating, ib. ; the land 
not yet free from traces of convict 
blood, ib ; fearful character of 
convict punishment, ib. ; testi- 
mony of a Catholic bishop respect- 
ing, 359 ; deeds of the Pierce- 
Greenhill pai'ty, ib. ; Mr. Frost at 
Port Arthur, ib. ; the convict 
system as viewed in the colony, 
ib. ; " Tasmanian bolters," 359, 
360 ; objections to convicts enter- 
ing the free colonies, 360 ; advan- 
tages reaped by the colonists from 
convict labour, ib. ; the Australian 
colonies planted as convict settle- 
ments, ib. ; threats of the Vic- 
torians (and in old times the Vir- 
ginians), to retaliate for the ship- 
ment to them of convicts, ib. ; 
Tasmanian society, 361 : and 
government, ib. ; working of the 
ballot, ib. ; a ride to see the natu- 
ralized salmon, 362 ; the salmon 
madness, ib. ; causing the destruc- 
tion of all indigenous birds, ib. ; 
and has introduced the British 
wasp in the ova, ib. ; reptiles, 363 ; 
moonlight in Tasmania, ib. 

Thomson, William, the Maori king- 
maker, 278 ; his dress and high 
character, 283 ; true patriotism, 
ib. ; insulted whenever he entered 
an English town, 283, 284 ; his 
death, 284. 

Thugs, New Zealand, 284. 

Teetotallers {see Pitcairn Island). 

Telegraph, the, in the American 
desert, 94. 

Teiiitories, the, their capabilities, 94. 

2 Q 



594 



INDEX. 



Toronto {see Canada). 
Transportation {see Convicts). 

Umritsur {see India). 

" Uncle Sam's money," opinions of 
how it goes, 209. 

University, English, men at the New 
Zealand diggings, 244, 245. 

Utah, 118; first occupation of, I20; 
annexed to the Union, ib. ; 
theories of annexation, ib. ; ap- 
proach of the Pacific Railway, 
121 ; intended to put down Mor- 
monism, ib. ; the Mormons will 
not defend their country, but re- 
treat and pioneer the way for fur- 
ther English settlements, ib. ; the 
justice or injustice of interference, 
123, 124. 

Van Diemen's Land {see Tas- 
mania). 

Vancouver Island {see Pacific). 

Victoria {see Rival Colonies), the 
smallest of our Southern colo- 
nies except Tasmania, 303 ; and 
the wealthiest, ib. ; settlement (in 
1835) on the site where Melbourne 
now stands, ib. ; population of 
Melbourne, ib. ; buildings, rail- 
road, income, and debt of Victoria, 
ib. ; talent and energy brought in 
by the rush for gold, ib. ; public 
spirit of the people, ib. ; more 
English, not more American, 
than the people of New South 
Wales, 304 ; effect of the gold 
discoveries, 307; discouragement, 
by the Democrats, of the monopo- 
lization of land, ib. ; population 
of, now stationary, ib. ; admirable 
system of statistics, ib. ; statisti- 
cal history of, 308 ; three sta- 
ples of, ib. ; from Melbourne to 
Kyneton, ib. ; harvest work in 
Victoria, 309; the "Thistle Pre- 
vention Act," ib. ; agricultural 
villages, ib. ; the towns of Castle- 
maine and Sandhurst, ib. (j-^?^ Sand- 
hurst) ; a prairie fire, 312 ; the 
Murray river, 313 ; its insignifi- 
cance as a river, ib. ; but impor- 
tance to commerce, ib. ; the 
"Riverina," ib. ; territory in- 



cluded in it, ib. ; nature of pro- 
ductions as shown by the news- 
papers, 314, 315 ; seasons and 
climate, 315, 316; plutocracy in, 
3r7; {see Squatters); Upper 
House of, going into committee 
on its own constitution, 323 ; pro- 
bability of its disappearance, ib. ; 
class animosity in, 324, 325 ; edu- 
cation in, 326, 327 ; protection 
to industry in, 331 — 337. 

Victoria Ports, Williamstown, Sand- 
ridge, and Geelong, 350 ; early 
prospects and present ruinous state 
of Geelong, ib. ; ridicule of, at 
Melbourne, ib. ; fine country 
round Geelong, 351 ; wheat and 
vines of, ib. ; Ballarat, ib. ; min- 
ing districts around, ib. ; names 
of places at the mines, a chrono- 
logical guide to date of settlement, 
352 ; climatic changes, ib. 

Vigilance committees in Western 
America {see Lynch Law) ; San 
Francisco and the Sandwich Is- 
lands, 175. 

Virginia City, arrival at, 137 ; an 
unsatisfactory governor, 138 ; 
dancing-rooms, 139 ; substitution 
for ladies, ib. ; peculiarities of cli- 
mate, 140 ; whisky shops, ib. ; 
Artemus Ward's opinion of, ib. 

Virginia, approach to, 3 ; opinions 
in, respecting the war, 5 ; rivers 
and mineral wealth of, 9 ; in pro- 
duction inferior to poorer states, 
ib. ; competition of white and 
black labour in, 20. 

Virginian twilight and sceneiy, 6. 

Washington, first view of, 27. 
Washoe, in Nevada, its reputation, 

138. 

Wellington, 237 ; fruit and flowers 
of, ib. ; cattle branding with an 
old college friend, 238. 

West Honduras, 222. 

West (America), future capital of, 
68 ; empire setting towards the, 
71 — 73 ; plains of the, 73 ; men 
and women cf, their dignity, &c., 
132 ; power of sheriff in, 171 ; 
qualifications for a sheriff, 172. 

Western States (of America) grow- 



JAN 1 9 1949 



II^DEX. 



595 



ing more English, while the At- 
lantic cities are falling into the 
hands of the Irish, 30, 31 ; Western 
perception of the dangers from 
Irish preponderance on the At- 
lantic seaboard, 31 ; -wideness of 
Western thought, ib. ; advantages 
of the Western over the Eastern 
States, 72 .; Western objection to 
greenbacks, 141 ; agreement to 
accept forged notes if well done, 
ib. ; fancy for classical names, I55) 
156 ; honesty, 181. 
Western editors, 107 ; Connor, a 
Fenian editor of the Union Vedette^ 
ib. ; his denunciation of Mormon- 
ism, lb. ; an editor's room in Den- 
ver, 115; influence of Connor, 
107; "wasp -like" pertinacity of 
the Vedette, 117; injury done by it 
to liberty of thought throughout 
the world, ib. ; editors in America 
as a iiile foreigners, and mostly 
Irishmen, 140 ; editorial inquiry 
for "Tennyson and Thomas T. 



Carlyle," ib.-, murder of James 
King, 169; an editor's story, 172. 

Williamstown {se^ Victorian Ports). 

Winthrop, Governor, founder of 
Plymouth, Mass., 3. 

Wisconsin {see Norwegian). 

Wolf, a white, 79. 

Woman, in Victoria, 347 ; female 
suffrage, ib. ; social position of, bad 
both in England and Australia, 
ib. ; superiority of, in Western 
States of America, ib. ; a Kansas 
argument for woman's rights, 348 ; 
disproportion of the sexes in the 
Australian colonies, ib. ; the Ame- 
rican Sewing Clubs during the 
war, ib. ; woman's place among 
the British section of the Teutonic 
race, 349 ; want of, in young 
countries, 371, 372 ; Irish work- 
house girls sent to the colonies, 
371 — 373 ; their bad character and 
influence, 372, 373. 

YORKTOWN, ancient memories of, 3. 



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